Growing our Family......through Adoption!

Hello Friends and Family,

We hope this post finds you happy and healthy. We are all doing well and enjoying the cooler weather that comes along with my favorite season-fall! Averie began two-day preschool a few weeks ago and has transitioned smoothly and is enjoying it! We are thrilled to be creating this blog and sharing some exciting news with you- several months ago our hearts were opened to growing our family through international adoption and we began speaking with people who have walked this journey, researching agencies, and learning about the different programs offered. We came to settle on an agency in Portland, Oregon called All God's Children International (AGCI) Here is a link to their website. http://www.allgodschildren.org/ After several months of thought and prayer, we felt that Ethiopia was the right program for our family and we completed our agency's application, were accepted! and began working on our dossier, or paperwork. The past four months have been spent working on compiling all of the necessary items, including photographs, background checks and FBI prints, medical forms, power of attorney forms, recommendations, our homestudy (we worked with a local agency called Catholic Charities of TN to complete this)..the list goes on and on. We spent lots of time getting things notarized, making photocopies, and making sure that our dossier was the best representation of our family. We had bi-monthly telephone calls with AGCI to facilitate the process. On Monday, September 19th, we sent in our completed dossier and it was reviewed on Friday the 23rd. We didn't have any revisions to make so we were officially placed on the waitlist! (Our dossier will soon be translated and sent on to Ethiopia to be reviewed by the government and the Ministry of Women's Affairs.) Our parameters are 0-12 months and we are open to a boy or a girl. Our boys number is #102 and our girls # is 131. That means that 101 families ahead of us are waiting for a boy and 130 families ahead of us are waiting for a girl. The estimated wait time for a referral is up to 18 months. Once we receive and accept a referral, we will have to travel to Ethiopia twice, once for court and to meet our child and the second time to bring our child home.

We truly appreciate all of your prayers and support and know that we could not get through this journey without our friends and family. The waiting will be difficult but we plan to spend this time educating ourselves (we just attended a local conference this past week on adoption called Empowered to Connect), participating in events with the local adoption fellowship and support groups here, and just living life and enjoying Averie!! We are thrilled to be walking this journey and feel so blessed to have you all right here with us. Thank you.

Warmly,

Kristi, Thomas, and Averie :)