Its been over a month since I have had a chance to post an update. The end of the school year and the start of my Autism classes have kept me busy. Yes, I am back to school. I will be take classes for the next two years to obtain my endorsement in Autism...always a student :) Now that summer is here I hope that I will have more to to regularly update our blog.
Our adoption journey came to a major fork in the road at the beginning of the month. The referral committees in Ecuador have not been able to meet at all this year for lack of a quorum. We received an e-mail from CHSFS stating that the expected national committee that was to be held in May did not happen. It is suspected that these difficulties are due to the changes that Ecuador in making to create a more efficient adoption system. We were told in an e-mail that CHSFS is was now REQUIRING us to explore the possibility of dual-list with another adoption program. Dual-listing means that we pursue a single adoption while waiting in two different programs. When we received placement of a child through one program the application for the second program is placed on hold. So our options were: 1. Continue to wait with just Ecuador; unsure of when or even if they will give referrals for 'healthy children' for international adoption 2. Dual list with another country's international program 3. Dual list with Bethany for their domestic infant adoption program 4. List with another country or domestic and leave the Ecuador program. It many not seem like a big set back but when you look at dual-listing from a financial aspect it is. Dual-listing with another country would mean redoing all the paperwork, documents, and paying almost all the fees again. That is a lot of time and money that we don't necessarily have. It felt like we were right back to where we started from over two years ago. For weeks we researched, debated and prayed for some incite on what we should do. Finally we decided to dual-list in the domestic infant adoption program thought Bethany. We are just in the initial stages; trying to figure out what paperwork we will have to do/redo. We are hoping that this process will be more stable and move a little more quickly.
For some happy news....June 3rd Giovanni and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary! We've been though a lot over those 5 years, but I can imagine going though it with anyone else. To celebrate our anniversary we decided to added a new member to our family. So here she is.......... Introducing Lily!
She is a chihuahua/jack russel mix, about 2 years old, and is the sweetest thing! We got her from the Animal Rescue Project and it was love at first sight. She went with me to St. Louis a couple of weeks ago and she had such a fun time. She played with Tiki (my sister's dog) and absolutely LOVED going up to see my dad. She was very popular there. I think we have a therapy dog in our mist. 
