Eyes on the Prize

We finished our 3rd and final pre-adoption home study last Thursday. Everything seems to be moving along nicely, and our social worker says we'll be great parents! We are pretty excited to have this part out of the way. Next steps:

• Physicals
• Taxes (so we can submit our most recent financials)
• 16-hour training at the agency
• another 8 hours of online courses
• submit dossier to DC
• WAIT
• find funding for the biggest expense of submitting dossier to ET, plus travel there (x2)
• WAIT
• submit dossier to Ethiopia
• WAIT
• receive a referral of a baby!
• WAIT
• Travel to ET for court and meet baby!
• WAIT (I assume this one is the hardest)
• Travel back to ET to bring baby home!
• Post-adoption assessments

So as you can see we have a ways to go. But, we're happy and excited and keeping our eyes on the prize. Baby prize.

I'm headed to DC this Friday through Tuesday for the National Anti-Hunger Policy Conference. I'm looking forward to it, but it's always hard to leave for 5 days. DC is a great city, although I have to admit that I've passed up monument and history tours to shop at H&M... whoops.