long due update March 10, 2008

It’s been awhile since I last posted, but things are moving along here at our house. Dave has been working long and hard and our permanent residency applications are finally done. It was a lot of paperwork and this time I was very glad that he took this project on! We’ve sent it off to CAFAC in the mail and they will check it over, sign it, and send it off to Ottawa for us. So now we are officially done all we can do in this crazy process and are stuck waiting like so many other families. How long? It’s the question we hear all the time. It’s a normal question and people are genuinely interested in our process. It’s just frustrating because other than our other friends who are adopting as well, most people have no idea about what it takes to adopt. – WE didn’t even know when we began! (oh am I glad about that!) The official word is that our agency is now processing dossiers that arrived in Ethiopia last April and May. Our timeline could be as follows; referral (pictures of our kids) could come any time between August and December. From that point, we should travel in 4-6 months. So that would be anytime between December – July! If we pick them up in July, it will have been two years from start to finish for the adoption. In the world of international adoption, we have learned that this is not unexpected or unreasonable. For the rest of the population this seems like an eternity. While we wait we do continue to mark the time in small ways. Our Ethiopia group is still meeting (this month is at our house!), we are going to Winnipeg on Tuesday for a “Circle of friends” meeting with other CAFAC families, and our pile of blankets are growing steadily.