We Are Certified!!!

We are certified to adopt by Pinal County! I was starting to get a little frustrated as it had been almost a month since we submitted our home study for approval. They actually certified us on Christmas Eve, but didn’t notify us until today. I guess they didn’t understand how patiently I was waiting for this. The next step is for our certified home study to go to Citizenship and Immigration Services to get our I-171-H (we are basically asking for pre-approval for our children’s visas to come home – at least that is how I understand it). I heard from another couple that this part of the process should take about 4-6 weeks. We have a lot of paperwork to gather in that time and we need to finish our 10 hour dvd course. After all of our papers are gathered and we have received our I-171-H we will be getting them certified by the Secretary of State in Arizona. After that our dossier has to be authenticated by the U.S. Department of State and the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington, D.C. Then our dossier is off to Ethiopia! I am just excited we got this step completed, it was weird being on hold for a month.