It's official!!!

It’s been a month, and I have lots to say today!
When I wrote last, we were on our way to the approval meeting in Toronto, at our agency. On the day of the appointment, we dropped our oldest 3 children off at the bus stop and our youngest child at a good friend’s house.
[Many of our close friends have been incredibly supportive and helpful in this whole process, watching our kids, writing reference letter after reference letter....we are so thankful for our friends!!! It is so important to have a strong support system while you are adopting, during the process and after!]
So we were on our way.  It was our first day alone in weeks, so it was a bit of a date for us I guess, and it was great to have the time to talk on the way to Toronto.
We arrived at the consulate’s office at 10, just as it was opening.  We met with the consulate, who signed and sealed our documents and we were out of there in about 20 minutes.  Thinking we would have to wait a long time, we had not scheduled our adoption meeting until after lunch.  So, while we waited, we went to a local Afghan restaurant and ate some delicious kabobs for lunch.  Toronto is a fabulous place to try all sorts of different foods, and we’ve tried to eat at a different ethnic restaurant whenever we go.
After our meal we headed to our agency.  We handed in our papers and documents, signed some more papers and documents and wrote out a cheque!  And our adoption became OFFICIAL!!
One exciting thing that we talked about at the meeting, was the appointment of a sort of liaison in Guyana.  This is a woman that has just been hired by our agency since we last spoke to them.  She will be in Guyana, working on our behalf to find a suitable match for our family.  She will be doing the work that we were expecting to have to do on our first trip.  Her job will be to identify a child that matches our government criteria (namely born after July 2010), making sure that child is adoptable, and getting a medical done for them before we even hear about it.
Basically it is saving us a trip!  We don’t have to travel to each individual orphanage anymore looking for a baby, we will just get a referral like most other countries do.  This is a huge relief on many levels.  We are excited that we are not required to go “pick” a child as this task seemed impossible!   Also, we are thrilled that we may not have to go to Guyana 3 times.  We love the idea of going to see the country where our child was born, but it will be so hard to leave our other children behind every time.  One less trip is also much more affordable, (although we are paying extra to have a liaison in place it’s still less then paying for 2 more flights!).
So now, our papers are on their way to Guyana.  Actually by now they are probably sitting on the desk of our liaison!

And we wait.  This time though, we are waiting for a phone call saying that a baby has been found!!!!

This call could come anytime.  More then likely it won’t be next week, and realistically it could take months.  But, it could be as soon as NOVEMBER!!!!
Now, this first trip will be a shorter one.  Maybe as long as 10 days or as short as just a week.  We will go to Guyana, meet our baby :) and register the adoption with the courts in Guyana.  Then, when our intentions are made known we fly back to Canada without our baby, and wait until the court reconvenes, which usually takes about 2 months.  At that time, we may travel again, this time for a longer trip of 3 or 4 weeks.  At that time we will be able to finalize the adoption and take our baby to Trinidad for a visa so we can take him or her home with us.

So for now, we have some more work to do!  We have an appointment booked at our local travel clinic for the first week of October to go get travel vaccinations.  The list is long: Tuberculosis, Typhoid,  Yellow Fever, Rabies, Hepatitis A and B, Cholera, Dengue Fever, anti malaria drugs.....we are going to be protected against everything you could think of!!  Most of these drugs are between $40 and $200, and we are very fortunate that Derek’s drug plan covers all of them!!!  What a relief!  Many of them need to be given 2 or 3 times over the course of 4-6 weeks, so that is why we are getting them right away.  We’ve also started looking at hotels, flights and other things like that, just to get a feel for what is in the country.  Pretty exciting stuff happening here!!  We are so thankful that everything is going so smoothly so far.  It’s been about a year since we first brought up the word adoption in our home, and only 9 months since our home study began and here we are getting vaccinations already!
God is so good :)