While much of what determines how fast (or not) your homestudy will be completed lies in the hand of your social worker, the tips that I offered definitely do help speed the process along. I am thrilled to say that our homestudy is DONE. It has been written, typed, proof-read, corrected and sent from our homestudy agency to our placement agency, and our awesome placement agency, AAI, received it, reviewed it and approved it all today. Woo hoo! To celebrate, here is a picture a friend just sent me of my Solomon's hand in hers. Isn't that a beautiful hand?? I can't wait until that little hand is in mine. :)

The best part about this is that we can now officially accept our referral for Solomon Tsega, and our dossier can get sent on over to Ethiopia, so we can get in line to have our case heard in court. If you have been involved in Ethiopian adoptions, you likely know that the courts close for approximately two months every year for the rainy season. It seems sort of unreal that an entire legal system can be "closed" for such a long period of time, but such is life in Africa. The rumors are starting to fly that the courts will be reopening sometime in the next week or two, and there are many people anxious to see cases start being approved, and families starting to travel for their children. The faster things get moving, the faster the backlog of families will be processed and the faster our case will make it to the top of the list, so we are definitely routing for some action to start soon.

Tomorrow, Josh and I will drive two hours to our nearest USCIS application support center, where we will have our fingerprints taken for our I600A application. It seems sort of unreal that this will be the sixth time we are doing this. You would think that the computers could just hold on to the fingerprints since it's not like they change or anything.

Once we are fingerprinted tomorrow, everything that we need to accomplish for the adoption (for now) will be done. Homestudy update is done. Dossier is completed and turned in. I600A application is completed and turned in. Everything will be on it's way to Ethiopia soon. Not too bad considering we didn't even decide to commit to adopt Solomon Tsega until Aug. 10 and started the process at that point.

The next thing I will be working on is the welcome bag for Tsega. Our agency (and many others) has adoptive parents send a small "welcome bag" to their child, to let the child know that they will soon be joining a new family and to introduce the child to their new family. Our agency recommends sending a letter, a small photo album, a small toy or two and a t-shirt from where the family is from, along with a single-use camera, which is used to take pictures of the child receiving their bag.

I love making these photo albums, and in my next post I will share some tips on putting together a great photo album for the child you are adopting.