Five years ago :-)

Guess what?/ Adivina que?

We are approved for a child up to three years old!!!

We officially entered the waiting list in Colombia!!!! I'm beyond speechless..

Constanza sent us an email this morning at 3 am, and I didn't look at it until 8:30 am... I can't believe the email was sitting there for such a long time! When I started reading the preview of the message from work (thanks Gmail for that feature!), I had to call Talley and have him wait with me until the message finally opened (longest 45 seconds in my life...).

WE ARE APPROVED!!!

Next steps: In approximately three years, our paperwork will be send to a regional office, then child referral and then travel to pick him/her up! Long way to go, there may not be more adoption news for a while, but we are thinking about the prize at the end of this journey.

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Nos aprobaron en Colombia para adoptar un ninno o ninna hasta 3 annos de edad! (de 0 a 35 meses). Hoy recibimos un correo de nuestra agencia con tal noticia. Empece a leer el correo en la oficina, pero tuve que llamar a Talley de inmediato porque no podia tener la noticia yo sola.

FINALMENTE NOS APROBARON!!!

Que viene? En tres annos (o un poquito mas) enviaran nuestros papeles a la oficina regional, luego nos daran los detalles del ninno/a disponible para adopcion, nosotros confirmamos que le queremos, y luego iremos a recogerle!!!! Falta mucho tiempo para que todo esto suceda, pero no importa, igual estamos alegres que va a ocurrir!!!!

Calculations

From date: Friday, July 10, 2009
Added 4 weeks

Normalized to 28 days
Resulting date: Friday, August 7, 2009

Well, it is not like I'm counting... but tomorrow suppose to be 4 weeks since our addendum was submitted to ICBF, and we haven't hear a word from our placement agency. Should I call to ask for an update? I'm afraid to know that there are not news. But I also want to hear any piece of information. Does that make any sense?

So, to relief some stress, we are leaving on vacation on Saturday for a HUGE family reunion! Almost my entire family from Venezuela will be flying to Orlando, and we will spend a week together taking our oldest niece Isabella to Disney. My brother and his wife will be traveling with us from Austin. The only ones missing will be our youngest nieces (1.5 yo) and my brother-in-law.

I'm looking forward to this coming week!

Home Study Addendum - III

We got news! Not the one that we were expecting, but at least there is an update. Our addendum has been finally submitted to ICBF past Friday 07/10. Apparently, when our documents travel to Colombia, they don't go straight from the translator desk to ICBF, but they have to be legalize by the Miniterio de Relaciones Exteriores (Department of Foreign Affairs). Our agency estimate that we may have another update in 3-4 weeks (hopefully the approval!).

Thank you all for your positive thoughts! We know were are not alone in this journey; it is great to be able to share this with others who are exactly in the same path.

Home Study Addendum - II

So this is exciting... we have something new to do with the adoption process and it is not only to wait!

I picked the Addendum up just after two hours they notified it was ready (I took a break from work, their office is just 5 minutes away from mine!).

What are my plans for tomorrow??? Go to the Secretary of State to have the document Apostilled, then send it to Washington DC for Adopolis to send it to Colombia. Then back to work...

Then we will wait for translation, then it will go to ICBF... and finally get approval! Maybe another month or two before approval? We are soo close! Curious enough, it will be close to the year mark since we started the process.

What are we doing on the mean time? Simple, we are working like crazy. Talley is studying to complete his Linux certification and I'm starting classes to finish my bachelor degree. So that will keep us busy for a little bit. Hopefully at the time we finish our goals, we will be very close to get a child :-D