Let me back up a little bit and tell how we got to be working with COTW. Daddy and I had been talking about adoption for a while, but were feeling completely overwhelmed with all the possibilities: domestic, international, foster care, independent, infant, older child, etc. We got a good suggestion to read the Adoption Handbook, which helped us understand what each type of adoption was like, and then we decided we would talk to various people that we knew that had been through various types of adoption, and this helped us very much to know what would be the right fit for us. We also met with a social worker Maureen from Catholic Charities, who would be the one to help us with the home study. She helped us narrow down the possibilities even more. Of course, we prayed a lot during this to help us understand God’s will for our family. We ultimately realized that adopting from Guatemala was the right decision for us. We checked out a few adoption agencies, and realized that working with COTW would be best for us, and in October 2004, we signed a contract with Catholic Charities for our home study and with COTW to be the adoption agency. From then on out, we had a lot of paperwork to take care of, for the home study and also for COTW. We had short questionnaires, long questionnaires, autobiographies, family references, friend references, financial analyses, medical analyses, criminal record checks, child abuse checks – it seemed like everyone wanted to know everything we had ever done or ever wanted to do. Plus everything had to be signed, then notarized properly, and then authenticated. Authentication is the process whereby the Secretary of State's office signs off that the notary is legitimate and that the notarization was done properly. We had some difficulties getting other people to act as quickly as we wanted them to, and the amount of work was daunting, but we knew that you were at the end of the road and that we had to do all these things before you could join our family, so we were going to do it!!! We attended our first COTW party, the Halloween party, in October at Purina Farms. It was wonderful to see so many happy families, and so many adorable kids in completely adorable Halloween costumes! We also attended the COTW Christmas party, which was also wonderful. By this time, we had already met another family that had used COTW and was home with their sweet little girl, so we were able to spend more time with them at the Christmas party. We also met several other very nice families and heard parts of their stories, and it was great to receive support from them already. Rudy Rivera, the head of COTW, had arranged to bring four Guatemalan senators to the party, so they were also impressed by the obvious love shared with the children and how much the children were truly members of the families. The senators, I’m sure, will be wonderful good-will ambassadors for COTW when back in Guatemala. From there on out, it was just waiting on the placement. A couple forms had to be re-done due to some minor errors. Everything in the file has to be absolutely perfect or it could be kicked out of the process and sent back, causing more delays. So, we had the forms re-done. Then, more wait.