Eleven Months

Wow! It's so hard to believe that it's been eleven months, and they're not even finished matching JULY yet. What's ironic was that I really hoped our paperwork would be finished by July. I knew it was a pipedream last year to hope that, but I did. If it had, we'd be next. But it didn't, and we're not.

Rumors are all over the place this month, as usual. Referrals usually come out around the 25th-27th of the month. Rumors have had everything from this batch finishing July (23-31) to going well into August (18). I'd prefer to see the latter of course. The first half of August is supposed to be pretty light. Hopefully, this means they'll get through it quickly. September seems to be fairly light as well because the CCAA didn't get too many dossiers logged in that month. October is a monster month. I hear November is as well. November won't impact us though. Luckily, we're in the first half of the month. If they divide October up like they have the other months, we should be in the first or second batch for October. I'm still hoping for a referral by Christmas, but I'm being told that is very optimistic of me.

In the meantime, I'm watching to try and determine if we'll need to re-do our immigration paperwork. This is approval from our government (CIS, used to be INS) to adopt an orphan from another country and bring her/him home. The approval lasts 18 months, but takes several months to put together. It involves getting a homestudy update as well as updating police, medical, and financial clearances. If we get a referral in December, we should be okay. If it goes past that we have to renew. The problem is we probably should start the process in October, at the latest. If we only knew what to do!!!!!

That's the latest in adoption world. As always, we'll keep everyone posted as soon as we hear anything that impacts our situation. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy a cybershower this month with my travel group. See you next month with the 12-month update....same bat time, same bat channel.