Dossier Submitted!

Well, it's official. We have submitted our dossier, and a whole lot of money (!!!). This is what we've been working on for the past 3 months. We took a little longer than anticipated, with Luke's 3 knee surgeries and all, but we're finally done!

Our dossier consists of paperwork that tells everything about us (from family photos, a study of our home and relationship, medical records, blah blah blah) each notarized, then given the state seal, all in triplicate. Lucas and I both had a HUGE sense of relief when we completed the final organizing and stapling of papers:

So now what? Our precious precious stack of papers will make it to Washington DC sometime early next week, and then forwarded on to Ethiopia. Sometime during this period, we'll officially be put on the wait list for a little boy and a little girl! (related or unrelated, both under 24 months)

And now, the real waiting begins.

Ahem... NOT twins.

So, this week I've been a little heart-broken.

We got news that adopting boy/girl twins had an indefinite wait. (Partially my fault for assuming, but I also thought that waiting a "little longer" meant a few months and not a few years.) It turns out that Radu, the man who oversees matches in the orphanages our agency uses, said he has only ever seen 1 set of girl/boy twins, translating to years of waiting... IF we were the first in line to request this. Twins, boy/boy or girl/girl, would be about 18+ months for a referral (which doesn't include travel or the wait time for processing the visa and all legal matters).

So- no twins for us, unless we decide that is the only way we'll go. And it isn't.

Right now, we are deciding between adopting 2 unrelated children (approx 6-8 month wait for a referral... although one can never be sure) or going back to our original plan to adopt 1 child.

I know we'll make the right decision. Thanks for your thoughts.

Luckily, my husband knows how to cheer me up by delivering these beautiful flowers to my work by sis Sari at Ladybird Poppy:

Cute, huh?