WOW. Let me tell you it was quite the shock to me as well. I know many of you were surprised to hear that we jumped from #9 to #4 in a months time. Believe me, so are we. :-)
So I know you all are probably thinking that the referral call may come "any day now" and you would be correct, it wouldn't shock me if that happened. However, when I talked with one of our case workers on Thursday I asked her if I should expect a call in January and she said that would be, "optimistic, but not impossible". So, I'm anticipating the referral call to come sometime in February. I've decided I am going to check back in with them on January 4th to see if we have moved at all so that should give us a little more information on when "the call" will come. I doubt we will have moved much because of the holidays, but who knows, I never thought we'd jump 5 spots in a month like we did.
So, to clear up exactly what all this means and where we are headed from here, I want to walk everyone through the current and future parts of this process.
We are currently 4th in line for "the call" AKA "our referral" what that means is our agency will match us with a baby in Ethiopia. On the day we receive the referral call, our agency will let us know that they have a photo and some health information for us to view via Email and we can then decide if we want to accept the referral of the child. Everyone will probably know when this day arrives, don't worry I'll be shouting it from the rooftops.
However, what sucks about this is after we accept the referral, we cannot put the photo on the Internet. ABSOLUTELY CANNOT. This is at the request of the Ethiopian Government and can put our adoption in jeapordy if we do. So, we plan to have a little get together at our house either that day or a few days following referral day so that everyone can see the photo and learn a little more about our baby.
Then, we have to do more waiting. I know, that sucks, right? What we will have to wait for is our case to "Pass Court". Once that happens we will be clear to book our travel and head to Africa. The court process is taking about 3 months from the day you receive your referral call. During that waiting time, I will receive an occasional photo and growth update about our baby from our agency. This will also be the time when I will allow my dear friends to finally throw the shower they've been itching to have.
After that it will be over! Wow, I can't believe the finish line is in sight! Our baby is very likely living and breathing "somewhere out there". It's Crazy. Just Crazy. We are so blessed.
In closing I found this cute little saying, so I thought I'd share:
