We met with our social worker today for our final meeting of the home study. It went really well and our home study and application were approved. Today is the day that we were officially added to the list of families waiting to adopt from Ethiopia.
We now have to fill out the forms for government approval to adopt internationally and then we start the dossier. We are very excited and feel like we have now taken a monumental step forward in this journey!!!
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
2-23-2010
Hello again! Just finished watching the Olympics! They are presenting the gold medal to Canada for women's Ski Cross. GO CANADA. Hope they do the same in hockey!
Well, there was some question as to whether our adoption application was submitted before they changed the minimum age of a child that you can adopt. They recently changed the minimum age from one to two but we are able to adopt a one year old, so we have officially decided on a girl between the ages of one and three.
We have our next meeting with our social worker at our house on Thursday. She will meet Ainsley then and I don't know what else but I will fill you in after!
Well, there was some question as to whether our adoption application was submitted before they changed the minimum age of a child that you can adopt. They recently changed the minimum age from one to two but we are able to adopt a one year old, so we have officially decided on a girl between the ages of one and three.
We have our next meeting with our social worker at our house on Thursday. She will meet Ainsley then and I don't know what else but I will fill you in after!
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Our First Posting
We have finally started a blog to keep our families and friends up to date on our adoption process. For those of you who don't know, we are hoping to adopt a 1-4 year old little girl from Ethiopia.
So here are the details so far. In the summer of 2009 we began interviewing potential adoption agencies and after a few discouraging meetings we found the agency that seems like a perfect match. The name of the agency is Children's Home Society and Family Services.
Our application was submitted in early November and we then participated in a two day adoption preparation seminar in December.
After Christmas we then started working on our "Self Study" which is a 10-12 page essay on your childhood and life to date as well as answering questions about your marriage and spouse and what you expect out of the adoption process. Having completed that we had a three hour meeting this morning with our social worker which begins the next phase, the Home Study. The meeting went well and we really like Mary (the social worker). She is a very down to earth no nonsense kind of person and has been doing this for a very long time.
I will give you a brief synapses of what the process is after the Home Study. Once the home study is complete we will begin to prepare our dossier to the Ethiopian Court. It is at this point that we are placed on the waiting list for a child referral. That is the next step, referral. After that we submit the referral to the University of Minnesota International Adoption Clinic for evaluation and then we wait to travel to Ethiopia. This whole process can take anywhere from 1-2 years.
I will try to blog as often as I can although for parts of this process there is not a whole lot to report on.
We are all getting excited as it finally feels like we are progressing. Ainsley is very excited and she has informed us that she would like a little sister so that she can be a big sister. She has also started to inventory her toys so she can figure out what she needs to share with her new sister. She asked us the other day if her sister is living where the earth shakes and is that why her family can't look after her. It is a very strange feeling knowing that your child that will come to live with you forever is already living and breathing in another part of the world and you don't know her yet or she you.
Feel free to pass this link on to whoever I may have missed and please apologize to anyone I may have missed. We lost a lot of email addresses the multiple time that my computer had crashed.
We will keep in touch,
Bonnie, Jim and Ainsley
So here are the details so far. In the summer of 2009 we began interviewing potential adoption agencies and after a few discouraging meetings we found the agency that seems like a perfect match. The name of the agency is Children's Home Society and Family Services.
Our application was submitted in early November and we then participated in a two day adoption preparation seminar in December.
After Christmas we then started working on our "Self Study" which is a 10-12 page essay on your childhood and life to date as well as answering questions about your marriage and spouse and what you expect out of the adoption process. Having completed that we had a three hour meeting this morning with our social worker which begins the next phase, the Home Study. The meeting went well and we really like Mary (the social worker). She is a very down to earth no nonsense kind of person and has been doing this for a very long time.
I will give you a brief synapses of what the process is after the Home Study. Once the home study is complete we will begin to prepare our dossier to the Ethiopian Court. It is at this point that we are placed on the waiting list for a child referral. That is the next step, referral. After that we submit the referral to the University of Minnesota International Adoption Clinic for evaluation and then we wait to travel to Ethiopia. This whole process can take anywhere from 1-2 years.
I will try to blog as often as I can although for parts of this process there is not a whole lot to report on.
We are all getting excited as it finally feels like we are progressing. Ainsley is very excited and she has informed us that she would like a little sister so that she can be a big sister. She has also started to inventory her toys so she can figure out what she needs to share with her new sister. She asked us the other day if her sister is living where the earth shakes and is that why her family can't look after her. It is a very strange feeling knowing that your child that will come to live with you forever is already living and breathing in another part of the world and you don't know her yet or she you.
Feel free to pass this link on to whoever I may have missed and please apologize to anyone I may have missed. We lost a lot of email addresses the multiple time that my computer had crashed.
We will keep in touch,
Bonnie, Jim and Ainsley
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