Let the countdown begin!

We are officially # 18 on the waiting list! Yay! I am so glad to finally have a place in line!

The immediate follow up question to this news is "when will you get a referral?" I certainly wanted to know the answer to that question too, so I did the math. :) The Thailand program does referrals every quarter (September, December, March and June) as a group. Typically, there have been five standard program referrals each quarter. So, unless there is an absolutely huge referral group in September or December, I won't be hoping for a referral then.

Going into the March referrals, we should be #8 on the list. Since our program doesn't always go straight down the list, they try to match the child with the family that can best meet any special needs they might have, and because some families are able to request a certain gender (usually girls) we might get a referral in March.  But June is a more solid guess.

Our agency's official timeline for dossiers submitted in August is 12-15 months for a referral. Unless there is a huge slowdown, that seems very conservative to me.

I believe the general estimate for travel after you receive a referral is 9-11 months. If that is still true next year and we get a referral in June, we could travel around April of 2013! That would be exactly two years from the time we applied to Holt and is the amount of time we thought it would take. So we are right on track. :)

I can't wait to hear about the September referrals!