The Peebles Journey to Amelie: Bal Vikas Adoptive Families Reunion '09

About Our Family

This blog documents our lives, hopefully in a way that is open, honest and helpful to other families. Those are the ones that have helped me most, while realizing we all have a lot of the same experiences, just wrapped differently. We'll post the challenges and victories starting with the road to our fifth child, Amelie, in Ethiopia. Christine is a proud stay at home mama, artist, and yogini. While Daniel is a self-employed attorney who loves writing, meditation, collard greens and goofy adventures. As parents we do our best to be calm, peaceful, mature and competent adults. Some days we succeed at this, while most we simply fall flat on our faces; we never stop trying. We hope to raise spiritually aware children who have a deep compassion for people and a sense of connectedness with the rest of the world.

We have five children, two are homegrown: Sorin (17) and Liam (14) both of whom have special needs and are quite inspiring to us. Our three youngest are adopted from Guatemala, India and Ethiopia: Sky Bear (7) and Andrew Prasad (9), and little Amelie Lin Sosena (8 months) will complete our family when she comes home this year. We will have children from 3 major continents. It was never planned that way, but we sure are tickled by it and proud of the diversity!

You can peruse our old blog entries from 2006-February 2009 here.

Our Current Timeline

Early October 2008 We made the exciting decision to adopt an infant/toddler girl
Late October 2008 Decided on Ethiopia and applied with Children's Hope International Adoption Agency
November 4, 2008 Received news we were approved for a girl, age 0-3 from Ethiopia
November-December 2008 gathered Homestudy documents, visited with social worker, had to redo KBI fingerprinting for Sorin.
January 28, 2009 Homestudy completed.
January 29, 2009 Submitted I-600A to USCIS.
Switched to Adoption Avenues Agency for placement,
January 30 Redo of State Police clearance letters to obtain 'notarized' clearances for the new agency
February 2009 Compiling dossier documents. Our goal is to have the dossier authenticated and ready by mid-late February 2009.
February 3, 2009 Received letter from USCIS asking us in any Wednesday for fingerprinting.
February 6, 2009 Submitting official Contract with Adoption Avenues. Acquired all birth certificates needed for the dossier.
February 13, 2009 Received 'notarized' copies of State Police Clearance letters.
February 18, 2009 Completed fingerprints at USCIS.
February 24, 2009 Received USCIS I-171H approval letter
March 5, 2009 Completed State authentication for Dossier, and mailed to adoption agency.
March 11, 2009 Dossier sent to Washington DC for authentication
March 19, 2009 Dossier arrived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
May 10, 2009 MOTHER'S DAY we received Amelie's Referral!
May 11, 2009 Officially Accepted Referral
June 24, 2009 Received our Court Date of July 14!
July 14, 2009 Reassigned new Court date of July 30th due to MOWA closure
July 30th, 2009 We passed Court!!!
August 3, 2009- Got news that we have an Embassy appointment for September 8th!
September 3, 2009 Leaving for Addis Ababa
September 5, 2009 We'll hold, kiss, hug and tickle Amelie Lin Sosena for the very first time!!!
September 12, 2009 Amelie's Homecoming!!!

The Peebles Journey to Amelie

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Bal Vikas Adoptive Families Reunion '09

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