Correction

There was a mistake in the numbers from our agency. A mistake in our favor. :) Our October numbers are 66 for girl and 44 for boy.

October numbers!

We are at number 68 for a girl and number 46 for a boy. Glad to see some movement. :) Also was told that the current wait time is 10 months. Of course that can always change, but that sounds so much nicer than 12-18 months. :)

What's going on in the construction world?

I haven't updated in a long time. Not much to report. Soon we will have our October numbers and there has been some movement. :) Yesterday was a good day in our construction world. The ceiling has been sheet rocked and the insulation has been blown in. Boy am I learning a lot. It looked like a gigantic Build-a-Bear workshop in our yard over the weekend. I got the windows primed. The siding is pre-primed so we won't worry about painting until next summer. Jason needs to put in some nails on the outside and then it will be 100% ready for winter. It is fun to see progress. It is hard to get stuff done with Jason being gone so much, but it is coming along.

September numbers

Since we are adding a bedroom onto our house, I thought it was fitting to use some of the tools that are lying around to "construct" our numbers for September. We are 50 for a boy and 76 for a girl. Not much movement with the courts being closed. We are thankful that we are at the top end with not much movement. How hard it must be for those in the single digits to not see much movement. Hopefully soon there will be lots of referrals.

Blogging trouble

I have had lots of trouble with my blog locking up. I'm not sure why now it gets to cranky at me. Just realize this if you look at it and it doesn't seem right and might not be as up to date as I'd like to it be.

Some information about our orphanage

The following entry was posted on a friend of ours blog. I asked her permission to copy it onto our blog. I think it is very interesting and believe you will too. Thanks, Sarah for sharing with my blog followers. :)

The government orphanange that our child will likely come from is called Bethzatha.Children remain in legal custody of Bethzatha until they pass court BUT because Bethzatha has a close relationship with Hannah's Hope and approves of its staff and conditions, it allows Hannah's Hope to assist in caring for children BEFORE they are placed with families. This is H.U.G.E. It means that these kiddos get more personalized and individualized care MUCH sooner.

Other agencies do not take into care to assist an orphanage while court is pending. It may be that other agencies do not have the facilities to do so, or it may be that they do not have the same close relationship with the orphanages that they work with. The latter may be the case because other agencies work with *many* orphanages, matching children with families regardless of where the child is being cared for, while AGCI (our agency) only works with Bethzatha and only refers children after they are at Hannah's Hope.

And this is also a factor as to why the referral time for AGCI is a bit slower than other agencies. And while slower isn't easier-we would still prefer a quality living situation---physically and psychologically.

I have seen some pictures of Hannah's Hope. Wow..I'm impressed!! It is so fun and bright! Very exciting to see that it isn't the white walls and not so good conditions that you hear about. If you care to see any pictures, let me know and I'll send you a link. I can't explain how I felt when I saw these pictures. May God grant us peace while we wait patiently for our perfect little one. One that we have been assured is being (or will be) taken very good care of.

Fun mail

For those of you that aren't in the adoption world, this will be very confusing to you. Sorry about that. The last set of fingerprints we had to do was for our I600A. The I600A is "Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition." Basically this step preapproves the prospective adoptive parents to bring an “immigrant” orphaned child into the United States. The approval can take up to 3 months. It isn't that we wondered IF we would get approval, it was just a matter of WHEN. One of those fun legal things to do. Well, yesterday I got our Favorable Determination Letter (FDL) in the mail. I was in such disbelief I had to fax our case worker at our agency to see if it was really the approval we were waiting for. It took 2 weeks!!!!! It was fun to look at it as the letter was also sent to the National Visa Center. (Once we are matched with a child, he/she will have to get a Visa in order to travel) It was also sent to the capital of Ethiopia. FUN!!! :) It doesn't seem possible that we got this already!!! We do have to pay attention b/c some of it expires in 15 months and some in 18 months. More than likely we will have to go to Sioux Falls to have our fingerprints done again since our wait time has increased. Thankfully the first renewal of fingerprints is free. Our case worker said that we have all paperwork completed until we get a referral. Now we continue to wait in hopes that we get matched up sooner than later. I was actually a bit disheartened after hearing the wait time up-ed to 12-18 months just to get a referral. It didn't take long b/4 God gave me a sense of peace. I was doing some reading the other night. I was able to get a little bit excited over all of this. It is so far away yet and seems so out of reach that it is hard to be super excited! God gave me peace and reassurance that it would all work out in His time.

In the meantime, I have day care secure. :) That is a tough issue in a town our size. We have 2 in home day cares. The day care we took our girls to is no longer open. :( We have a lady on our block that does day care. This would be ideal. She said she would have room for us. Since they up-ed the waiting time, I was concerned that we'd be out of luck. I didn't feel it was fair to make her hold a spot for us. It is hard to plan day care when we don't know when or what age, etc...Again she told me that she would have a spot whenever the time came. :)