LID!!!

Yesterday I got the news!!! Our offical LID (the date we got onto China's waiting list for a child match) is 9-10-08. September 10, 2008 - I have to say it again to believe it - a date I've been waiting for forever!

We are also diligently working on our dossier for our son or daughter from Ethiopia! :) I got our dossier packet from our agency Monday night and stayed up until midnight (even though I had to work Tuesday) working on stuff. I tried to stop several times, but I just couldn't. My excitement had me all geared up. Everything is almost ready - it's very different now that it's my second time around because it feels a little less overwhelming. It doesn't hurt that we're able to use our physicals and stuff from our China adoption since the physical was less than a year ago. Plus the Ethiopia dossier is much less intense! I'm just waiting on: my wonderful references to notarize their letters (you 3 are awesome - thank you!), my doctor to notarize his letter (which he said would be done Monday or Tuesday), the CPA to finish our employment verification letters (should be done this week), and the bank to provide their letter (which should be done the end of this week). Our agency got our homestudy yesterday. They will review it by next week. So, hopefully we'll be sending in the complete dossier within a couple weeks. The great thing is that we can be on the waitlist for Ethiopia before the 171-H (called I-797 in GA) comes. For those of you not in adoption lingo...this is the form from US Immigration which often takes a long time to get in GA (took over 4 months for them to give us for China adoption). In order to get the referral for our Ethiopian child, we need the I-797, but we can send in our dossier and move up on the waitlist without it. This could make a big difference in time until our referral. Right now there are 6 people on the waiting list for girls and 3 people on the list for boys. My agency said if we continue to leave our application open to either sex, it will likely be a baby boy. We planned to let God decide the sex again, but hmmmm.......I would really like to buy some girl clothes (or borrow them from all of you with girls). :) We'll see..... :) Here is the link to my agency's blog with some great pictures of some of the new babies who are already home!!! http://ianfamily.blogspot.com/ (How could I NOT want a girl looking at that?!) :) This is a link to a video that inspired me and got us looking into Ethiopia - I'm SO glad I saw it! http://www.allgodschildren.org/about/videos/ (Click on the 4th video down that says "AGCI - Hannah's Hope Ethiopia")