Our 1st appt.

Our social worker emailed me today and we have an appt. on Thurs the 29th for our first visit for the homestudy. We have to go to Springfield and meet with her so she can get to know us and our backgrounds. The next step is for her to do a home visit. She will come to our house and I really have no clue what she will do. For anyone who is curious about the process, I will kind of explain what we have to do. (this is a new thing for us too) We have signed up with an adoption agency called International family services, and we also have a social worker, Annie, who works for Lutheran Family and Children Services. Our first step is getting a homestudy done so we can submit that to IFS. We have a LOT of paper work we have to complete including: passports (done), a letter to the orphanage of Toukoul, listing a bunch of financial info, a few government docs, and I'm not even sure what else. Once we get the paperwork sent in to the Ethiopian government, they will send us a referral which is a picture and info about a child that "fits" us. The agency says it usually takes 3-12 weeks from the time the dossier (all the paperwork) is sent in. If we accept the referral we travel to Ethiopia in approximately 8 weeks to pick up the child. We will stay for 7-10 days in Addis Abba, Ethiopia and then we will returyn home with our daughter!! We are trying for a girl. So....we are in the midst of gathering info for the dossier meaning we have probably 5 months or so (totally a guess) until we get a referral. We'll keep you posted though.