Phone Orientation

Today we had our phone orientation with Gladney - the agency we have chosen to help us with our adoption. We feel super comfortable with our choice - they are very organized and clearly know what they're doing. We now feel fully geared up for a mountain of paperwork but we are not overwhelmed. 

Here's a breakdown of the process:

Basically we have 4 parts to the paperwork process: Application, Homestudy, Immigration, and the Foreign Dossier. A lot of the paperwork will be repeated so that's nice but there is still a ton more. I have decided to take the summer off to get our paperwork ready, catch up on some adoption related reading, and finish some house projects (not to mention spending time with my nephews). 

After the paperwork is completed and approved then we will begin the matching process (hopefully we will be getting siblings - more about that in later posts). Once a match is made they take the babies out of the orphanage and put them in foster care. The babies will be taken to doctors to have testing done (HIV testing is done twice) and to have a complete medical work up. We then get a picture and the medical information of our prospective cuties. 

Then begins the legal process where we wait for the courts to finalize the adoption and FINALLY we go get our babies. 

Seems like a lot but we're pumped - we are excited and nervous but we're ready. We'll keep you all updated more often now that I'll be done with school and we'll be doing more.