I thought I would share a little about the adoption process. The dossier, our international paperwork, is a long list of items to be gathered before we are able to be put on the waiting list for the referral of a child from Guatemala. It usually takes around 3-4 months to complete this part of the process and 2 1/2 weeks into the process and we are about 90% finished! This is what we need to do: a homestudy (a 32 page questionnaire and three required books to read), scheduled for all day on the 28th of October, apply for our passports, collect our marriage and birth certificates, do a criminal check, have medical evaluations done, employment letters, Income tax report, two witness statements, two letters of recommendations (this is in addition to the six we needed for our homestudy), complete a personal indentification letter, a letter from the doctor about our current children's health, complete the I-600 and G-28 forms, an Immunization Exemption form, get approved by the CIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services), create family photo pages (3) for the Govenment, a family video, a family photo album and a photo album for our child to have until we come to get her! That's not it, for the CIS we also have to appear in Detroit for a live scan of our fingerprints on the date they chose for us, file a I-600A form and wait about 3 months for approval by the CIS. The CIS gives our adopted child permission to enter the United States. Many of the forms need to be notarized and sealed by the State of Michigan in East Lansing. We have also decided to have our whole family vaccinated for Hep B. and LG and I also for Hep. A. (This was a very stressful decision for me!). We are hoping to be finished by the second week in November although we will still be waiting for CIS approval. With all these background checks our neighbors should feel pretty good about living next to us! I'll let you know when we get on the waiting list! We have been told that where things stand today, we should have our daughter by Christmas of 2007! But foreign govenmental policies change often so we will have to be patient! Thanks for checking in!