Fingerprinting - Check.

Here we are outside the fingerprinting shop? store? facility?

Okay, welp the fingerprinting for the adoption is D.U.N. done.

It went off without a hitch. Okay, I'm lying. We drove separately to the fingerprinting place so we could both go straight to work afterwards. We were the dude's first clients? patients? customers? He asked for our paperwork and I gave him our confirmation papers I printed off the internet when I scheduled and paid for them. Those were not the papers that he wanted. FAIL.

He was very gracious but told us we had to have the papers that the agency gave us. No problem, they are probably sitting on my dining room table in the pile of paperwork, thirty minutes away.

I must say that Martin was VERY merciful. I probably would have steamed the whole way home if it had been his fault. It was a great lesson in mercy. We had a nice drive home then back again. We even ran over a garbage can and carried it down the road with us for a bit. But that's what you do when you have a Jeep Wrangler apparently.

Once we got back, our fingerprinting experience took three minutes each. Part of me wishes he would have hummed and hawed over us to make it seem worthwhile but Martin had a conference call at 10 AM and we walked out at 9:55 AM.

God is good. And funny. And merciful. And never boring.

It is Finished!

I feel really weird writing the last words of Jesus before he died on the cross but my statement is true.

Our homestudy is finished. Or maybe I should say that our homestudy meetings are finished. We met with Missy three times in the past month and she, in fact did ask us everything but our underwear size but she has such a sweet way of doing it!

We both have to get our FBI fingerprinting done (October 25), our physicals done (mine October 10 and Martin's November 1) and send her our financial records. I completed those yesterday so we'll say they are 99.6% finished. The 0.4% is me actually writing out Missy's name on an envelope and putting them in the outgoing mail at work (which I'll do tomorrow).

Missy told us that this was the hardest part of the adoption. It feels weird to be finished with the hardest part. Honestly, it wasn't that hard. But the anticipation of it was.

OR maybe I'm looking at it like those silly ladies who go through terrible labor (is there good labor, Sarah? Really?) and say it really wasn't that bad. I'm not sure.

What's our next steps you ask? Well, I'll give you a run down (as I know it - I find out new details all the time).

1. Turn in (with $1,000 0r so) our I600A to the State Department. This tells them that we are getting ready to send in our paperwork to the Ethiopian government.
2. Turn in our agency paperwork and the $3,000 fee. We waited until after our homestudy to send this fun stuff in.
   
3. Turn in our dossier to Ethiopia (with about $10,000). This can't happen until our fingerprints are cleared and our I600A has been processed through the State Department (get on that Hilliary!).
4. WE WAIT.......................................................
5. (While we're waiting patiently, the dossier-which is basically a big packet of paperwork, has to be translated into Amharic then it is processed and once approved, given to the orphanage our agency works with.)
6. They will then find a match for what we're looking for (a baby, 0-2 yrs and siblings up to 4 years old).
   
7. Once we're matched we will go to our doctor with the medical reports and see if the match is what we requested. If everything looks okay, we'll look at the pictures of our kids. (if not, we're allowed to send back the match and ask for another - but not without crazy prayer).
8. Then we wait for a court date.
9. Once our court date is appointed Martin and I will fly to Ethiopia to meet our kiddos and go to court.
   
10. If we pass, we'll go back in a few months to pick them up. If we don't pass, we wait for them to get the correct paperwork and pray we pass the next time (but we don't have to go back for that one).
11. Get approval to pick them up!

It looks like a lot but so much of it is out of our hands. Once we are finished with the paperwork, it's up to the government and orphanage to do the rest.

I have to admit. I'm in a different state of mind this week. I'm sure it will subside a bit but I'm in expectant mode. I've even thought Is it too early to get a crib and a toddler bed or two? Yes, yes it is.

I finally feel like we're getting somewhere. And what a great feeling that is. God is good.