So, what's next?

I've been asked by a couple of people about where we are in our new adoption process. We are in what's called the paperchase. Our intial paperwork will be mailed overnight to America World tonight, which will allow us to be assigned a family coordinator. In the meantime, we are also filling out paperwork for our homestudy, through Catholic Charities of North Dakota. Thankfully, we will be able to use the same social worker, who did Gavin's post placement visit in December and is helping with his readoption here (He is our son, the readoption process just allows us to get a US birth certificate for him and changes his citizenship from permanent residetnt to US citizen).

We hope to have our homestudy visits in March and have our paperchase finished by the end of March. Then, if our SW approves us for the number of children we HOPE to adopt, we will be able to view their file, accept their referral, wait for approval from Homeland Security, apply for a court date, pass court, then TRAVEL...WHEW!!

We are praying for everything to be finished quickly, as USCIS (Homeland Security) is backlogged from the crisis in Haiti. We know our paperwork there can be there for awhile..The other thing we hope is to have everything to Ethiopia so we can get a court date before August. Courts close from August to October. If we don't get everything done and a court date before August, it means months more in waiting for these children. We would appreciate any and all prayers toward this end.

Finally, the Sweeney Family loves hand-me-downs. If you're going through old clothes and want to give them to a family who will use them, we will hope to have children in all shapes and sizes to wear them. We would appreciate all good hand-me-downs, including 2 more good bikes.

On non-adoption related news: I took Kael to see his cardiologist yesterday, because he had been experiencing alot of leg pains (this is his typical pattern of needing intervention)...Praise God!! His aorta is so wide open and heart functioning so well, that Dr. Wiggins doesn't need to see him until he's adult sized!! He thinks the leg pain may be coming from the Vit. D supplements we're all on to combat the lack of sunshine here. We hope that is the fix he needs. Thanks for your prayers.