2 days to go

Time Line of Adoption

July 2004 First contact with Choices:

We wanted to register with Choices when I was pregnant with Paul, but we were advised to have the baby first and settle with him and then register as we would need to redo the home study after he was born anyway. This turned out to be bad advice and we wish we had registered to begin much sooner.

Feb 2006 Registered with CAFAC and Choices.

I had some confusion during this time as to which agency was responsible for which piece. I found that if I wanted accurate answers about the Ethiopian side of things that it was way easier to ask CAFAC directly rather than go through Choices. I also had to re-do some paperwork (such as the medical and references) as Choices had given me the wrong information regarding what was required.

Feb –April 2006 Home Study/Homework

This was not really an issue for us other than the fact that it was time consuming. We found that a lot of the homework and paperwork that came from the two agencies was similar or repetitive.
May - July 2006 Paper Chase

We spent May through June collecting all the other papers that were required for the dossier. The biggest wait was for our full size birth certificates/marriage certificates to come from Alberta. We all had the wallet size ones already but Ethiopia does not accept these. After that it was all sent away to be notarized and translated into Amharic.

Aug 31st 2006 Confirmation that paperwork arrived in Addis

We had some hiccups along the way but eventually the paperwork was completed and arrived in Addis in one piece. I naively thought that it would be a matter of months to receive a proposal at this point in part I think because up until this point the Canadian process had gone smoothly and we were exceeding the expected timelines. I guess I unrealistically expected that that would continue to happen. Additionally, at the same time as we began, so did many other families from all over the world. This caused a major slow down in how quickly proposals came in. Infant girls (under 1) are by far the most requested. Its funny, no one can tell you that your process isn't different. We all want to believe that we will have our children home quickly.

Feb 28th 2007 Move

We moved from Colwood to Langford in part because we wanted to have a little more room for the baby. Plus we wanted to move from our duplex to a single family home. We made some serious compromises to achieve this though (the house we got is a real fixer upper).

Feb 2007 Passport

I needed to get a new passport, Jeremy's was still valid. I wished I had done this sooner however, because with the new passport laws in effect for travel to the states, I had to wait forever.

March/April 2007 Home Study Update

Because we moved and because it had been a year (home studies are only valid for a year), we had to get a home study update. We grumbled about paying another fee, but it was relatively painless.

Aug 2007 Immunizations

By the time the summer had come and gone, we figured we had better get a start on our immunizations. This hurt the pocket book more than the arm.

Sept/Oct 2007 Van

We became the new proud owners of a van. My Oma and Opa generously gave the van to us knowing that we would not be able to put all three kids in three car seats in the Honda Civic. We really appreciated this as we had no idea how we were going to be able to afford one.

Oct 2007 Proposal

On her 5 month birthday, we received a proposal for a beautiful little girl to join our family. In a daze we signed the papers on the 23rd. We also submitted our second round of immigration papers at this time.

Dec 24th 2007 Court Date

This was our first court date. For some reason, the file didn't even see the light of day in court. We were postponed until Jan 10th.

Jan 5th 2008 Adoption Seminar

Sometime in the previous year the BC govt put forward a new regulation that forced adoptive parents to attend an adoption seminar. It was a good reminder about some of the reading we had done early on in the process. Meeting other parents in the adoption process was great!

Jan 7th 2008 File Update

We received an update on how Marie is doing. Not much had changed but we did get new beautiful pictures and she looked very different from the first set. I wasn't really prepared for that as I had forgotten how much babies change month to month in the first year.

Jan 10th 2008 2nd Court Date

This time the court date went smoothly and we were approved. Jan 18th 2008 Provincial letter of no objection arrived.

Feb 7th 2008 Travel Date is set

We finally found out when we would be traveling! The hold up was waiting for paperwork to be generated in Addis. Most families are held up by the immigration medical, but that was not the case with us. We waited for the adoption decree, new birth certificate and passport to be created and sent to Canadian Immigration. All told, this took just shy of a month, so I guess we finally caught a break.