The process

Many of you have been asking what the process looks like, how long, etc. We are in what they call the "paperchase" right now. The great thing about the Ethiopia program is that you are allowed to work on your application at the same time as your dossier. The dossier is basically our huge stack of documents that goes to Ethiopia.

Our Application, these are the items we have completed and mailed in:
1. Completed information sheet
2. Phone orientation
3. Submitted request for international adoption application
4. All 5 reference letters turned in
5. Went to Collin County Sherrifs office for fingerprinting and mailed off for FBI clearance
6. Submit half of Ethiopia program fee
7. Submit homestudy fee
8. Family photos
9. Homemaker letter
10. Child Preference form
11. Birth certificates for all family members, marriage license, drivers license copy, passport copies
12. Sketch of home with dimensions
13. Pet vaccinations
14. Statement of health for all dependents
15. Sent in I-600a form to Gladney. Waiting on homestudy to submit form to USCIS(US Citizenship and Immigration Services). This is your petition to bring home an orphan. Eventually you have to go get fingerprints (yes again) and you wait to receive your I-171 form....which is the last form you need
16. There are about 10-15 other small documents in here that I'm not even mentioning...

What's left for application? Keith's employment letter, physicals (they are complete just need to be picked up), health insurance letter, and the homestudy.

and then....

You can submit your dossier to Ethiopia! I will have to do a completely different post on what you need for your dossier....ugh!

Once we submit our dossier to Ethiopia we will then be waitlisted. From what I understand the wait right now is approx 9-12months. We will then receive a "referral" and hopefully accept. The referral is when you are matched with a child. We will wait 4-5 months to meet our children and we will be making 2 trips to Ethiopia, each about 7-10 days. The hard part is that when you receive your referral it could take up to 6 months to bring your child home. I think this will be difficult. To sum all this up, we are looking at approx 18 months, give or take.