Almost There!!!!!

We are fingerprinted!!!! I planned to take a picture of us with our blackened fingers outside the local USCIS office......that's about all I can do to make fingerprinting exciting, but the office threw me a curveball. Our fingerprints were digitally taken! I didn't ask to have them taken the old fashioned way for the sake of our picture. I don't want to slow this final step! After almost 17 years in the Navy, I know my background is clean; now we just wait to see what's in Alicia's closet.

We are so close to the end of the paperchase we can taste it! We now wait for the all-important I-171H Form from USCIS once they complete our background check. We will easily wrap up the few remaining items before that form arrives. As soon as we get it, we'll mail our Dossier to America World (our agency). America World will thoroughly review it, walk it over to the State Department for certification, and then ship it to their folks in Ethiopia who begin the beaurocratic process with the Ethiopian government. Surprisingly, America World only takes about a week to get the Dossier to Ethiopia after receiving it. The date of Dossier to Ethiopia (DTE) is the next significant milestone. Then the waiting really begins.


We had a great Christmas with family in Florida, and we wonder how different our next Christmas will be. There is a small chance we will have our son by then. Even though we expect to be DTE by the end of the month, the Ethiopian government shuts down for vacation from mid-August to October. That vacation period makes our chances "small." The silver lining about waiting is we can distract ourselves with moving to San Diego!

Finalized Home Study!!!!!!

This is me with the FedEx envelope as we overnight our finalized Home Study to USCIS. Since it's Saturday, it won't get out until Monday for delivery to the USCIS office in Texas on Tuesday.

This is a significant milestone in our adoption journey. The Home Study is the key ingredient for both the USCIS approval as well as our adoption application (the "Dossier") that is submitted to the Ethiopian government. With the Home Study finalized, we only have three items left to get the Dossier to Ethiopia.

We received the Home Study from our adoption agency (AWAA) today - just 52 days after our Home Study Orientation at the AWAA headquarters in McLean, VA. USCIS needs this to finalize our application. With any luck, we'll get fingerprinted in January and shortly thereafter receive the Immigration approval form (the all-important I-171H Form) that we'll take with us to Ethiopia. This form allows us to legally bring our son into the country for the first time - kind of important! That means we can't lose it while we wait to travel.......which will probably be about this time next year.

AWAA periodically updates the waiting time for the various age ranges of boys and girls who are adopted. Last week's update showed the wait time for infant boys at 4-6 months, considerably shorter than when we first started (about 9-12 months). The official start of the wait time is when the Dossier gets to Ethiopia. That's why we're anxious to complete all of these steps as quickly as possible. If we can get our Dossier to Ethiopia in January, then we may have a referral (the Ethiopian Govt nominating an infant boy to us for adoption) around July-ish.

We're not holding our breath for a referral just yet. We have a lot to do between now and then (just read my mini-tirade in my last posting). We head to Florida next week to spend Christmas with family. With any luck, I can finish shopping before we leave!