Modus Operandi

So everyone wants to know how this whole process works...well, here you go!  A nice, boring post that explains it all.  (Well, to the best of my knowledge at least...so this is probably all totally wrong.) ;)

• We sign with IAN adoption agency...which includes about 10 forms to complete and notarize.
• Begin the homestudy process.  Despite what you might think, this has surprisingly little to do with our home!  It's 3 meetings with a social worker who we get to sit and talk with for 6 hours or so and go over absolutely every aspect of our childhood, adolescence, marriage and parenting skills.  Sounds like a good time, huh??!  (Especially for someone who hates talking about themself as much as I do!)  Luckily our social worker is super nice and easy to talk to, so it hasn't been too bad.
• In the meantime, we begin gathering all the documents we need for our homestudy as well as for our dossier.  (Dossier is just a fancy French word that means "a bunch of papers" or something like that.  It's what will be translated and sent to Ethiopia.)  Along with the homestudy, the dossier also includes certified birth certificates, marriage certificates, notes from all of our doctors (kids included), criminal clearances, fingerprinting for FBI...the list goes on and on and on...and absolutely everything needs to be notarized.  (You can imagine how much fun it is to try to convince E-trade to notarize a bank letter for us!)
• Once the homestudy is approved by us and the agency, it's sent in for state approval.
• The BIG step then is submitting our dossier to the agency.  This is when we officially get a number on the waiting list!
• Our dossier is approved by the federal immigration agency and we are officially eligible to accept a referral of a child!
• Then we wait...and wait...and wait some more until we finally get The Call that we have a referral!  (including pics, history and medical reports)  They are telling be it'll be about a year, so I'm expecting 1.5-2 years.  We'll see who's right...I'm hoping they are!
• Once we accept our referral, we wait (about 2 months) for a court date.  We travel to Ethiopia and hopefully pass court the first go around, and our daughter will legally be our child!  We'll likely be there about a week and then somehow say goodbye and leave her at the orphanage. {tear} 
• I know you're going to ask...and the answer is I don't know what happens if we don't pass court the 1st time.  The requirement to travel for court is very new.  It actually starts in a couple weeks, so we'll see what happens as time goes on.  (Side note: The travel requirement came about because there were instances of people coming to pick up their kids and then changing their mind after meeting them and abandoning them again.  Adoption is irreversible in Ethiopia, so those kids can never be adopted again.  Nice, huh??)
• We go home and wait for her visa to be approved (about 2 months) then go back to Ethiopia and bring her home!

So there you go!  Keep in mind that International Adoption is always subject to change at a moments notice, so by the time we travel this will likely be completely different.  Okay, thanks for making it to the end.  I promise to make the rest of the posts much more entertaining.  ;)