Ciao Paperwork!

That CD contains every detail of our lives.

108 scanned pages (some front & back). And the pages that came back from the Secretary of State that were stapled together were NOT allowed to be unstabled during the copy/scan process. T.E.D.I.O.U.S.

This is our dossier and it will arrive on our caseworker's desk Monday morning for review. Unless something is missing, we are DONE with the paperchase phase. The final word will come early next week. The Texas Secretary of State still has three documents, but there's nothing for us to do except wait for their return to our agency. Our caseworker will add those three docs to our dossier and we will receive a call that we are on the official Wait List.

What follows that call?

Our dossier will travel to a personal courier in Washington, DC who will then hand deliver our dossier to...

• the US Department of State for authentication
• the Ethiopia Embassy for their authentication

Once completed, our dossier will travel to our in-country caseworker in Ethiopia. It will remain there until we receive our referral for a baby. At that time, our dossier will begin being translated into Amharic and prepped for our court date in Ethiopia.

Current referral time: 8 months (from date placed on Wait List)

The Gladney conference call is held monthly with updates on in-country status and general happenings, including wait times. I will update the wait times as they come in.