To three or not to three, that is the question….
Dear friends and family sorry to not write in quite a while, we have been dealing with the hardest part of the adoption process so far. Last Tuesday we were told that that our immigration approval had been accepted and we were officially waiting as of March 14, 2006 (that is the date from immigration). Oh the joy that comes with that……..On a side note our social worker with the agency mentioned that she had checked to see if there were any sibling groups that fit our criteria (two healthy kids under 5…that’s it). She said there were none at the time, she did however say that she felt like she should tell us about two sets of sibling groups of three, that were waiting for families. Apparently most people are waiting for single infants and don’t budge on that, there is a novelty in getting a beautiful perfect baby, however I don’t believe that was ever a need we needed to fill. There are very few families willing to take older children and more than one, that must have been the sucker sign they were looking for.

The first sibling group of three consisted of a almost one year old boy, a almost two year old boy and a four year old girl. These children are some of the most beautiful children you have seen, and with a history that no child should have to deal with.

The second set consists of a four year old girl, a five-year-old boy and a six-year-old boy. I have say there was an immediate connection in me to these children, even before I knew anything about them. As far as attachment goes they have been loved by immediate family until August of last year. Pardon the cliché but in terms of adopted children it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, or in their case been loved.

Before I write anything more it is important for me to preface with the fact that we have made no decisions on this as of yet.

In general our adoption process would have gone like this……fill out a crap load of paperwork, have people scrutinize our lives, get approved by social worker, get approved by US government, wait for call about which two kids we could have, wait for travel dates, pick up kids, come home. After the paper work the thinking is out of our hands. Did I mention spend lots of money?

This how it has worked…..fill out a crap load of paperwork, have people scrutinize our lives, get approved by social worker, get approved by US government, be told about children that have been waiting in the orphanage 8 months for a family to love them, have three children’s fate in our hands along with the two at home we have been thinking about this whole time, go back and forth on the decision at least 100 times. Have paperwork changed to be able to take three kids (just in case), refile with immigration for three. Did I mention spend even more than lots of money?

I can’t write much more now, I have to go back to going back and forth.

Good News...we got our immigration approval. I will post more later.

Well no news is good news........Thats a big fat lie. We are still waiting for US immigration approval and customer service is not their forte. I set up an appointment and Mitch even went in to talk to them last Friday 3/10 to see the status of our application......yeah no news. Mitch says that was the only place where people didn't worship him in his uniform (not exact words, my interpretation), I guess he hasn't been home lately, I worship him when he does the dishes.

Even though a lot of our time is spent guessing how the next few months of our lives are going to go we are able to fill it with the day to day bump and grind. We are finishing the basement for Roman, who has lately been feeling deprived due to our lack of high speed internet access. He wrote a little rap in his spare time........."it ain't no fable, we don't have high speed cable......" I guess he has time to think of these things while he is waiting for his next website to come up.
Sierra is quite the social butterfly and keeps us busy driving to all of her activities, she starts soccer again this month and thank goodness she decided to break from cheerleading while soccer is in session. She has continued cheerleading for the last year even though I did try to reason with her that we don't cheer......we do!

Back to the adoption saga..still waiting. I do have somethings to be thankful for, we went to five more hours of our 40 hour parenting class commitment last Saturday, the class was filled with people adopting from everywhere including a friend of ours going through a different agency who got their referal for 2 boys the day after her paperwork was submitted even before final immigration approval. Both Mitch and I thought it would be overwhelming to have children in Ethiopia waiting for you with no idea when you will be able to go get them. Of course most of this process we have had no idea whats next. Another couple that is planning on adopting a infant girl from China have been going through this process now for 2.5 years uggh. So it doesn't seem so bad now.