A little update

I guess I haven't been updating often enough...

On the adoption front, our homestudy was approved by the agency in Washington and sent our application for advance processing of an orphan petition to USCIS. We're still waiting for that to come back.

In the meantime, we have 10 hours of adoption training to do online (thank God we don't have to sit in a classroom and do it!) and we are halfway done with that.

We applied for and have already received our passports.

We have to get notarized letters from our bank, our city police department, our doctors and 3 more references (the old ones don't count because they're not notarized) saying that we are healthy, responsible citizens in good standing who are capable of raising children, and we have to send a notarized letter to the government of Ethiopia introducing ourselves and our intentions.

We have to sign and get notarized a form naming someone in Ethiopia as power of attorney for our kids there when we know who they are to secure medical testing for them and to represent us with the government and embassy.

After all of those things are notarized, we have to send all of them to the apostille in Washington DC, which from what I understand notarizes the notarized documents.

We also got our appointments to get fingerprinted (because for some reason the ones we did a year and a half ago for Vivi's adoption don't count). This time we got a letter saying "This is your appointment date and time" instead of getting to schedule it ourselves. And we have to go all the way down to Detroit to do it.

I think that's about all the progress we've made so far.

And on the home front, we're keeping busy and trying to keep cool! We joined a new play group for local adoptive families. They get together one Saturday a month to do something like go to the zoo or a park, and also do occasional things during the week. In a couple of weeks a few moms with African American or biracial little girls are going to get together and bring all our products and supplies and have a hair party to exchange ideas. I'm really excited for that! We learned about the group through a mom and daughter we met at the library. The little girl's name is Viviana, and they call her Vivi (pronounced Vih-vee). It's funny to have Vih-vee and Vee-vee playing together :)

Playdates

A couple of pictures of Vivi and her friends from some of our recent playdates. I keep trying to type out an actual post with words but I never seem to be able to finish it...

Having a poolside snack with Cammie, who was born the day after Vivi


Vivi helping Amira smell a flower


Splashing in the pool with Brett

4th of July in pictures

Family Dinner

Last weekend, we were invited to dinner with my grandma's side of the family. We had a party room, which was great because we could visit with everyone, and Jenavieve showed off her remarkable eating skills, sampling from everyone's plate as we went around the table.

We even got a 5 generation picture, not many people have that!

Here we go again...

We're ready now to announce that we are in the process of adopting again, this time from Ethiopia, and we're very excited! After Jenavieve's adoption was final, we started thinking about adopting again, and Ethiopia has been on our hearts for awhile. We want Jenavieve to have siblings close in age to her, and we feel led to Ethiopia as a place where our children are, as well as a place that we can minister to and help the people who live there. After a lot of prayer, we began the process in March, filling out more applications and paperwork. We are with Adoption Advocates, International, a great agency who really puts the children first. They also have sponsorships and other services that they provide to children in Ethiopia and other countries that may not be adopted.

This time we have been approved to adopt up to 2 children from Ethiopia, up to age 4.

It is very likely that Jenavieve will end up being the baby of the family (for now) since we are open to children up to 4 years, and the majority of people adopting from Ethiopia are only open to a baby or young toddler. She could also have a sibling the same age as her.

Here is the basic timeline for how an international adoption works.

We already did our homestudy with the same Michigan agency that did Vivi's post placement visits. The draft was sent to AAI in Washington last week to be approved. The homestudy is the first part of what is called the 'paper-chase' for international adoption. For the homestudy, we had to supply tax forms, bank statements, marriage, birth, and adoption certificates, and doctor's notes to prove that we are healthy and able to parent more children.

Next, we apply for approval from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and get our passports. All of the necessary documents get compiled and sent from the Secretary of State, to the U.S. Department of State, to Ethiopia’s Embassy in Washington, D.C before it finally goes to the Ethiopian Ministry of Women's and Children's affairs. There it will get translated and processed, and then we will wait for our referral.

A referral is information about a specific child or children that includes pictures and medical information. We will get to review the referral and take it to a pediatrician for review before we decide if we will accept or decline it. If we decline the referral, we wait for another one. If we choose to accept the referral, then we get a court date and make travel plans.

Ethiopia just changed their laws to require 2 visits to Ethiopia. It is a bit of a hassle and an extra expense, but the laws are about the children, and we respect that and are getting excited to travel! Because the law is new as of May, we are all waiting to see how it all works, but both parents are required to appear in court, then we will go home and wait for approval to go back and pick up our kids. It is possible that Eric will be able to go by himself to bring them home. Another benefit of traveling twice is that our agency uses traveling families to take needed supplies to the orphanage, so if we pack light, we can take a lot of stuff to help out!

As far as time frame, it is unknown, it can take up to 6 months (hopefully not more!) to complete all of the paperwork before we can wait for our referral, and the wait for a referral can be anything from a couple of months to a year. But there is a good chance that we will have our kids home next summer.

I tried to explain the process the best I can, but if something is confusing, please either email or leave your question in the comments and I'll be sure to explain it, and stay tuned for more updates! We appreciate the prayers as we go through this journey to find our children :)

Little Rina

For those of you not on Facebook, here are a few pictures of Kana's adorable daughter Rina (pronounced Lina). Could she be any cuter???

 
 
 
 

Just living life

Not to much to report around here. Jenavieve was sick all of last week, she woke up last Saturday morning with a fever, and she pretty much slept from Saturday to Monday. Then the fever broke and the nasty little bug went to her head, she was stuffy and seemed to have a sore throat, and her breath was very stinky! She doesn't get bad breath yet, must be a baby thing, but this was pretty bad!

Finally, yesterday she woke up and ate, and ate, and ate. She ate breakfast, then brought me the box of goldfish and ate some, then she grabbed a package of crackers (we leave snacks where she can reach them so she can help herself) and ate a big cracker, and then she pulled out a granola bar. By the time she was done it was almost lunchtime, and she scarfed her lunch too! She had a lot of eating to catch up on and was finally hungry enough to do it.

Last week was kind of boring, we had to cancel all of our plans because I didn't want anyone to get that bug, and Vivi just wanted to be held, so we pretty much snuggled on the couch and watched tv. Yesterday I was actually excited to catch up on the housework since I spent so many days just looking at it!