We have a date. They're coming home!

We got the news today that the visa interview date in Ethiopia at the U.S. Embassy is June 6th.  We'll leave Ethiopia on June 9th and the kids will land in the U.S., as U.S. citizens, on June 10th.  They'll be home at last and we'll be able to share their beautiful faces with you.  Keep us in your thoughts and prayers during this exciting and busy time.

In the mean time and with typical Lommenpalooza style, we are working on our move to Jacksonville, FL.  We listed our home in Rochester on Friday last week and had a contract on Monday.  It really couldn't have gone better, especially in this market.  We feel so blessed that, although we have a lot going on, the moving parts are moving smoothly.  Dawn goes to Florida this weekend to try and find a house there and to interview nannies.  Yahoo!

Invitation for Visa Interview

We received an invitation from the U.S. Embassy today for a visa interview. This is the final step in the process. Our embassy interview should be June 6,7 or 8. On that trip we will bring them home. So around three weeks from now, Bethel and Endrias will be with us forever!

Embassy Submission

We just got news that our case has been submitted to the U.S. Embassy.  While there are no guarantees (boy is that a lesson we have learned well), typically the kids come home about 4-6 weeks after embassy submission.  The wheels are turning!

What are we waiting for?

We haven't entered a post for a while because we haven't had any news to enter. Many of you have asked what it is that we're waiting for. Well...to the best of our knowledge our adoption agency is still preparing our file to be submitted to the US embassy. This preparation involves issuing a new birth certificate and US passport for each child. The agency also closely reviews all of our documents up to this point to make sure they are all correct and can stand up to scrutiny of the embassy. Our agency quoted 8-16 weeks from our court date to submission and we are now on week 8, so things are proceeding as scheduled. Half of the couples we travelled with have been submitted to the embassy, so our hope is that our turn is coming soon.

Typically, the embassy will grant an interview for the kids' visa about three weeks after a case has been submitted to them. That interview is the last step in the process and when complete we can bring the kids home!

So, that's what we're waiting for.