Welcome

Hello and welcome to our first blog! This blog was created so that you could find out the latest news regarding our adoption, which is taking us to Ethiopia. We recently decided to switch from our domestic program to an international one. We felt drawn to Ethiopia; it is a good fit for us. Many of you may have been directed here from our website steveandjodiwanttoadopt.com so you know where we've come from and what we've been through. We are extremely excited and hopeful about our future and that of our children.
Anyways, down to some of the details ("the concrete stuff" as Jodi would say). We have had our domestic homestudy switched into an international homestudy. We have been fingerprinted once and we will go for biometric fingerprints on January5th. We have sent in our I-600A (pre-approval to adopt) and have been approved. We are mailing our dossier this week. The dossier is sent to our agency (Better Future Adoption), to our government and to the Ethiopian government...where it is notarized, authenticated, translated, and certified. This process will take a few weeks up to a couple of months. Then we will be waiting for our referral...it will be our children...pictures and medical reports. After we accept the referrals we will await our court date for adoption proceedings in Ethiopia. We do not have to be in Ethiopia for the court hearing. After the court date we will travel to Ethiopia for about one week..meet our children, take them to the Embassy for physicals and visa applications. While we are waiting for our referrals we will be doing more paperwork!! We will be requesting travel visas to Ethiopia, and filling out more government paperwork.
Thanks to everyone who has said a prayer or even thought of us. Keep us in your prayers; that everything continues to go smoothly. We will be posting on this blog regularly and hopefully will have some pictures and links for you soon. Stay tuned!