1 Visit Down, 3 to Go!

       Whew! That was so much easier than I thought it would be! The lady arrived (10 minutes early might I add! Good thing we were ready!) and complimented our home right away. She went over some basic information to make sure we understood the process, toured the house, and then we discussed our motivations to adopt. We went ahead and scheduled our next meeting for this Sunday and she said this one will take "several hours" as she will go over all of the questions AWAA sent her. We also have to be interviewed separately, not really looking forward to that one! I'm fine with Justin by my side but when we are separate I have a feeling the nerves will really set in. She said she thinks we will be able to get all of our meetings done before we go to Togo (we leave in 2 weeks!)! So we were really excited to hear that so that while we are gone she can draft her report and get it submitted to her agency. Once the agency goes over everything it will be sent to AWAA and then we will work on finalizing all of the paperwork for our dossier (doss-e-ay).  Justin has been completely amazing and has taken care of almost all of the paperwork for us! We are both having our physicals this week and then working on our financial report. After that, we are pretty much done... I think. I'm hoping our DTE (dossier to Ethiopia)will be sometime in January and from then it's just a lot of waiting. Justin and I are getting so excited and even though paperwork is no fun, it's exciting to be working towards this goal and ACTUALLY MAKING PROGRESS!
    I'll try to make 2 more updates before we leave for Togo but no promises since I haven't even started packing yet! By the way, I found a feature where I can enter in 10 email addresses and for those 10 people it will send you a short little email letting you know when I've updated. I know some of you have stated that you wished it would do that so if you want me to add your email just send me a quick note through this or through email :) I also set it so ANYONE can make comments but put on a restrictor (that's a new Rachel word) that I have to approve comments before they will be posted. Love you all!

Favorite quote this week:
    Justin turns to me in the car and says "I need to get a back seat for my CJ so we can put little Ethiopia back there when we take it out!" Cracked me up!