So where exactly are we anyway?

You may be wondering how much we have accomplished and how much more we have to do in this craziness that they call an adoption. At the top of the blog you can click on the tab that says Adoption Timeline and see exactly what has happened so far. To sum it up, we *finally* completed our home study in December. We also mailed out our I-600A form to USCIS. It takes about 2 months for approval and then we will receive I171H. This is necessary for the immigration of our adopted child.

We are mostly done with our dossier (the compilation of all paperwork that gets sent to the Congolese government). We would be completely done with the dossier, but we may have to re-do our physical exams. We got the exams done when we first started the home study, but with all of the delays they are now over 6 months old, which means they may be too old to use for our dossier. So, we are waiting to hear back from our agency about whether it is absolutely necessary to get new physicals done. We would really rather not because our insurance doesn't cover them and it is insanely expensive to visit with a doctor for 5 minutes.

Once we get everything we need for the dossier put together, we send it all down to Boise to get state certified. After that it gets sent to our agency to be translated into French. As all this is going on, we are waiting for a referral. A referral is where they match us with a child, give us a picture, a guess at the child's age, and some basic health information. We will probably have to wait another few months to get this (but it will be incredibly exciting once it happens!- then it will finally all seem real). Once we accept a referral, the dossier gets sent over to Congo and then a bunch of other stuff happens. I will fill you in on all that when we get closer.

While we are finishing up our dossier and waiting for a referral, we are filling out as many financial aid grants as possible to help with the adoption expenses. We are about $10,000- $14,000 short of what we need. We are really hoping that we will not have to take out a large loan because we want to adopt more children in the future and we won't be able to if we are paying off expenses related to the first adoption.

So, there you have it. We still have a ways to go. It looks like we probably won't be picking up our child until the fall. I will keep you updated as things unfold.