Merry Christmas!

Hopefully at this time next year there will be two more smiling faces in front of our Christmas tree!

Predictions

We often get asked "So, when do you think you will hear something?" Usually we don't really know what to say, but now we may have an answer. We have spent the last few weeks perusing other Ethiopia adoption blogs. The blogs vary from families who have just started the process to families who completed their adoption more than 3 years ago. We have (or more specifically one of us has) gone through each of the more than 50 blogs we found and recorded the milestone dates. Finally, an average of the time between each milestone was calculated. Based on all of that, the predicted, projected date of our referral is...(drumroll please)...March 23, 2011.

For those who might be interested (although who knows why you would be) here are the milestone averages we came up with: agency application to dossier submission - 149 days; dossier submission to referral - 168 days; referral to court date - 79 days; and court date to home with child - 39 days. The average for the entire adoption process is 428 days. It is highly doubtful that these numbers are in any way statistically accurate or relevant, but finding them gave us something to do while waiting for our referral and now gives us a day to plan toward.

Feel free to comment with your own prediction or best guess as to when the referral date will be. The person closest may win a prize, or at the very least the opportunity to babysit for us one of these days.