We're celebrating over here in the Pastoor household......our homestudy was faxed to AAI yesterday and we sent our dossier paperwork in to AAI today!!!!! We are expecting our homestudy to be approved on Monday unless they find something that our social worker needs to fix. We are officially finished with the biggest part of all of the paperwork and what lies ahead of us is maybe the hardest part....the waiting.

Next week we will need to get an original copy of our homestudy, once approved, and get it notarized and send it on to AAI. After that, AAI will send our approved dossier package to the State Dept. and the Ethiopian Embassy for stamps and seals. This process will take approximately 4 weeks. It will be sent back to AAI to be assembled and then they will send it on to Ethiopia. We will then be added to the official AAI waiting list. In the meantime we will send in the I600-a with a copy of our homestudy to USCIS to obtain approval for us to adopt a foreign orphan. This process has been taking about a month here in Michigan. They will send us the paperwork and appointment to go and get fingerprinted.

We aren't expecting a referral until after Ethiopia re-opens after their rainy season which would be October. Things could take longer or unexpectedly they could go faster. Thankfully we have so many things to divert our attention to right now, most importantly Liz's wedding. So hopefully the waiting will seem to go by quickly.

We would just like to send out a special thank you to all of the people that helped us get through this part of the process as quickly as possible! People like:

*The VanDyke family, who if it wasn't for them blazing the trail before us, we might not have started on this journey to Ethiopia

*Char our social worker for putting up with me pushing her to Hurry, hurry, hurry :)

*The great people at AAI (and Deb VanDyke) for answering countless questions

*Our doctors and the medical workers that got us through all of the physicals, blood tests, shots, and children passing out

*Brenda, Kathy and Randy our wonderful family/friends that gave us glowing references

*Our notaries--Linda who had to type a not so fun letter and sign and notarize a huge stack of papers and Walter for traveling far and wide to get to the papers we needed him to sign

*Those special people that believe in us and are standing beside us helping us to bring our child home. We thank you for contributing money to help us with the costs of this adoption. You will always have a special place in our hearts, your generosity is overwhelming!

*Those of you who have purchased a bracelet (or 2 or 3) to help out

and most of all.....

All of the peeps that were praying for us!

I hope I haven't forgot anyone, I'm sorry if I did.

Have a super-de-dooper weekend everyone!!

Wendy