what's happening

So.  its jan 1, 2014.  when we got our referral back in august we figured we'd have our little dude home by now or be preparing for our final trip to ethiopia to bring him home.  but that is not the case.   since our referral, a lot of changes have been made to the adoption process (by the United States) in Ethiopia and so our adoption process has essentially been at a stand still for 6 months. 

when we adopted luther in 2010, it was much simpler. . . the process was referral, court date (we didn't need to travel to Ethiopia for the court hearing back then), and then travel to Ethiopia a few months later for the US embassy interview, and fly home with our child. 

things are much different now and here is what (from my limited understanding) needs to happen before this adoption will be complete:  

1. referral (woohoo! we have this part done!)

2. receive Pre-Adoption Immigration Review (PAIR) documents from Ethiopia (this is what we have been waiting 6 months for. . . if you are interested in what this is all about, check it out here: http://www.uscis.gov/adoption/country-information/adoption-information-ethiopia

3. apply for PAIR letter from USCIS

4. receive PAIR letter from USCIS (this is predicted to take 3 months! ugh!)

5. send PAIR letter to Ethiopia

6. our file will then be submitted to court and we wait a couple more months

7. court date assignment

8. travel to Ethiopia to meet child and go to court (this trip should be about 10 days long)

9. come home (this is a requirement by our agency --  we have to return to the states after our court hearing)

10. wait for the US embassy in Ethiopia to schedule an interview to give our child a visa to travel to the US (this can take a few months also)

11.  travel to Ethiopia, take custody of the child, go to embassy interview and fly home

we talked with our agency yesterday and they expect us to get the PAIR documents by the end of January.  they also think that we could be through the entire process in 6 months. . . that is obviously an optimistic estimation based on the predicted timelines for each of the above steps.  but maybe the PAIR process will speed up the final steps.  at this point, we are just hoping for Luther's little bro to be home before christmas 2014.  doesn't seem too outrageous to ask for that, right?

in the meant time, happy new year!  2013 was a fantastic year for us.  and we expect the same and more from 2014.  cheers to that!