So, I Called and Would You Believe, I Got Answers!

So, I did some calling to our province's Central Office and would you believe it! They called me back and answered all of my questions :D

Basically, they told me that our Provincial Approval does expire after 2 years here where I live...BUT because Ethiopia does not have an expiry time we are good to go...even if a proposal came in for us after the Sept. 11 date they would still give us the referral.

Now, for their own records they will want us to meet with our SW to go over if anything has changed for us over the last 2 years i.e. health, jobs security, our living situation, our marital situation, have we had any children in the last couple of years etc. etc. But we will do that in the fall IF we don't have a referral yet....if we have a referral before then (please let us have a referral by then) then we don't update anything!

Oh and yeah, we went ahead and got Dr's notes already - it is summer and all and Dr's appt. are hard to come by at the best of times.

I think we will go ahead and get C-PICS (local police checks)done too just because I like to be organized like that! (I had 5 copies of our dossier ready for our SW when we first handed it in - she looked at me like 1.) I was a bit whacky 2.) Relieved as she said I saved her 2 hours of work which is why we got our Provincial Approval the same day)

Things have not changed - we still have the same jobs, still live in the same house, have no children (of the human variety that is), are healthy and can you believe that after almost 20 months of waiting and the last oh - 4 months of me sobbing incessantly we are not divorced.

Yahoo for us!

They also told me that they are centralizing all Intercountry Adoption to our capitol city this September. They will now have 2 dedicated SWs who work only on Intercountry Adoption....all stuff will be dealt with in one office and referrals will be emailed, faxed etc if you don't live in the same city. (Please note this could all change - it is the government we are talking about here)

One thing that might not be so good is the application for adoption has gotten longer and more detailed...which is good I suppose since the application we filled out 2 years ago was one double sided page...or bad because once again adoptive parents get put thru the ringer...I see both sides of it.

They were thinking that parents who have been thru Intercountry Adoption wouldn't have to jump thru quite all the hoops as they have been thru it already.

So, feeling better about all of that!

Thanks to all of you for your encouragement and support! I really needed to know that my instinct to call and call and call again were right!

You all ROCK!!!

Now, the only other thing remaining to make me truly not worried any more and completely happy is......