Our Big News!

Hi All!

This is a the first of what we hope will be many posts that chronicle our adoption journey. For those of you that have not already heard, we have recently completed our first steps toward adopting a baby from Vietnam! Our goal is to post our ideas, experiences and will keep you posted on our progress through the stages of international adoption (below are the stages...as we currently understand them):

(1) Application with Agency (DONE!)
(2) Application with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service
(3) Home Study
(4) Dossier Completion and Submission to D.C. for translation and then to Vietnam
(5) Adoption Education (this is ongoing throughout the process)
(6) WAIT (read books on parenting; decorate nursery etc., childproof etc.)
(7) Referral (Vietnam sends photos and information about the child we are matched with!)
(8) WAIT
(9) Travel to Vietnam for Adoption
(10) Post-bAdoption Tasks (More Detail on this later...We can't think this far ahead at this point)

Please note that we are keeping a timeline (a general one) on the right of this blog. We do not know how long it will take us to complete the process (the Vietnamese adoption process has recently been reformed and reopened, so we hope for the best).

There is so much about this decision and our experiences (even thus far) that we want to share with all of you. (Unfortunately, it is late, so most of that will need to wait for future posts.) In our next postings we will try to answer the big questions like: Why Vietnam? However, in the meantime, feel free to email us any questions or thoughts.