Phone Call With Holt

Hello! We just returned last night from our family reunion in Indianapolis. What a blast! We were celebrating my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. My Dad and his 5 siblings all were there and many with their families. So fun! I'll post a few pics later.

I did want to share with you that I just hung up with Angie Warfield, the Bulgaria program director with Holt. She was reviewing our file and wanted to touch base. She will now be calling Cathy at Counseling and Family Services so she can begin typing up our homestudy! Once the homestudy is written, we can submit our I800 form to immigration. She gave the go ahead to getting the 2nd set of fingerprinting done. She did let me know the medical forms for all of us will have to be re-done. She said the speediest route for getting a referral is if we are open to a 3-5 year old, open to either gender and open to minor correctable health issues. We are open to minor correctable health issues and can accept up to age 4 (since Sierra turns 4 this month). But we are desiring a girl. That is of course the "longer line." But still, things look good for us. So, our guesstimate is an 18 month long wait from when we submit our dossier. I think all Cathy is waiting on to start typing is our water report forms and I can drop those in the mail to her tomorrow.

Angie explained the Bulgarian referral process to me a little more. We would receive a tentative referral. After having all the information checked out by an international pediatrician and we accept, we would then travel to Bulgaria. Just a side note, she did say Holt has not seen children suffering from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome from Bulgaria. We would have time to meet with our daughter and then formally accept the referral. This trip would be about 7 days. We would travel home and have to leave her there for a few months. But, I found out I can send care packages during that time! Then we would return to Bulgaria for about 7-10 days and bring her home. We are discussing taking Sierra with us for that trip. We will have to get much closer to the date before we can actually decide.

Finally, I just wanted to mention one last thing quickly. There are several that approached us at the beginning about contributing to our adoption fund. Unfortunately, I can't remember who you all are (I'm sorry!) But, I was telling everyone to hold off until details for the account could be set up. Well, everything is now in place and if you are still interested, please see the side bar for instructions in sending those in. And from the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU.