Our adoption, part I

Hello all, this is my(jamie's) first post here so i hope it goes well!
A good portion of our family blog is devoted to international adoption, and so I thought i would explain a few things about our adoption so that it clears up some confusion and many misconceptions. When you found out about our adoption from Ethiopia many of you silently(and some not so silently;) ) wondered if we had thought this whole thing through, the short answer is YES, but the long answer is better and more informative. Adoption is very involved, all parenting is, but adoption more so, especially in the beginning. It was this time last year that i first began surfing the web searching adoption, int'l adoption, etc. There are hundreds of sites that come up, many options and many areas to compare and discuss. I spent many, many nights surfing for hours to determine which were the most viable and practical for Jon and I. We researched foster care and DCYF, Native American children adoption(since i am first nation), domestic adoption, and int'l adoption. These are only some of the options available, but fit us the best. Then we began to narrow our search, and found for different, and personal reasons many of the options did not work for us and our family, so we narrowed in on int'l adoption. Then came the search for a country, and there are over 50 i found(probably more), all with great programs, different costs, timelines and travel requirements. I spent many nights printing, highlighting, comparing and calculating all of the different agencies and countries, i lost days of sleep doing this!! Finally in late march of 2006 i had the list, i had narrowed it down to 3 countries and 7 agencies, now i got to do the fun part, wade through all of the glossy literature that the agencies send you, filled with pictures of gorgeous babies, and a dizzying array of facts and figures, Whew! I then gave Jon this bundle and we sat down together to go through and read and scrutinize every one of them. This took over 6 weeks of diligent reading and note taking, and finally we had it narrowed to 2 countries and 3 agencies. It was another month or so before we finally decided on Ethiopia, we had both taken some time away from teh search to think, pray and sleep on our final decision, and Ethiopia was the choice we both made. We felt, and feel very drawn to the country and its people, the history, art, religion, and food all draw us, and we feel our children living there in our souls. The agency choice turned out to be a bit easier, thanks in HUGE part to my cousin Beth, we had approached her and her husband Warren about their int'l adoption(from Korea) and were asking for advice and Beth highly recommended Children's Home Society and Family Services. Beth and Warren were very happy with them and used CHSFS for both of their adoptions, so CHSFS it was, since they were one of the 3 we had originally chosen. So finally in July we had a country and an agency, and we were ready to begin, if only the money was ready;)!! So to all who ask out loud or in your head, YES we have thought this through, every step of the way, every page printed, all 15 pages of the application, every page of our life history we had to write, every page of possible illnesses and health concerns we had to initial, every government form we have had to fill out and file, we have thought about the final outcome of all of these, and have decided that this is what we want to do and how we want to do it. We cannot wait to be a multicultural family, and are praying that time moves quickly for us once we are in the "waiting" phase.
While i have probably made this seem very onerous and difficult, it was not really, i approached it in the same way that i approached my pregnancy with Julianna. At that time i read every piece of info i could get my hands on, childrearing, childbirth, infant care, you name it i read it, and was still very unprepared for having a baby. The process of adoption is kind of the same way, you read and research and prepare and when you have that child home, you realize that no amount of reading would have prepared you. Jon and I are as prepared for this adoption as we can be, and since these children are not Julianna, I am sure that we are not prepared at all, but we will all learn together, as a family.
Part 2 will be about Ethiopia, adoption and our decision to adopt siblings.