Ok so this isn't exactly the beginning, but it is the first blog update since we got started. This past fall Monica and I attended a great adoption education course called F.A.C.E. and over the next couple of months educated ourselves and attended information meetings at a couple of different adoption agencies here in the Washington, DC area that have programs in Colombia. With Monica's family being from Colombia we knew that we wanted to try for Colombia first. Along the way we found bits of information online about "Parent-Initiated" adoption. This means that instead of having an agency here in the US, use all of their connections and lawyers, we would have to hire our own lawyer in Colombia and apply directly to the federal government of Colombia. The benefits are that the process is much less expensive and more importantly much, much faster.
We traveled to Cali, Colombia in December and stayed for nearly 3 weeks with Monica's large family and had an amazing time. It was very special for the both of us on many levels, one of which being the fact that we knew that one day we would return to this country to adopt our first child. The people that we met in Colombia were truly amazing and the country is so beautiful.
So here we are today in the begging of March and Monica is working on here dual-citizenship with Colombia and we have decided to work with a great local agency called The Barker Foundation for our home study and other services that are required for all adoptions. We are hopeful that we could actually be making a 2nd trip to Colombia this year, this time to return with our child. We have a ton to do over the next few months and then comes the wait, but we are hopeful that the wait wont' be too long and we are going to work like crazy to complete all of our processes and documents in the next 3 months or so.
