So Glad to Be Here with You!

Today I went to an Open House that is available to waiting families with my agency. This is the 3rd or 4th one of these I have gone to but today's was the first I'd gone to in over a year. It was a notably different situation for so many reasons.

In the past the wait was less than a year so people were up, excited and anticipating their referral. At today's event the differences were very apparent to me. In the past even though the agency only had 60-80 waiting families, there would easily be 50+ people at the open house. The feeling in the air was one of excitement and talk was a preparations for baby and travel. Travel groups got to meet one another and often set up additional times to get together.

Today, even though the agency currently has about 180 waiting families there were only about 20 people there and the discussions were more questions about the wait, the wait and ...the wait. People in attendance were either next on our agency's list (Jan '06 LID's) or 2007 LID's. I found it interesting that there were only 3 of us with 2006 LID's between March and December and all the rest of the people had LID's in 2007. I find, like a lot of us, that people are just trying to go on with their lives as much as possible until we get closer to our referrals.

As hard as the wait is, our agency director was a upbeat as she could be under the circumstances. On a good note it appears the citizenship laws may be changing for Canada. I knew something was in the works but she sounded like it was a done deal as of January 1, 2008. Is anyone else aware of this? Still waiting for details but it appears from what I heard today the Hannah may come home as a Canadian citizen. This wasn't the change I'd understood but would be a wonderful surprise if it was! Does anybody have details about this?

What am I thankful for today? I'm thankful to have found you! A wonderful, informative group of people online. It was sad to see people's faces fall as they heard of the wait being so much longer than they anticipated. The girl next to me had an October 2006 LID and had contacted the agency recently to see if she might be travelling next June? With a March 2006 LID, June would be a miracle for me! What made me sad was that with all the information available to us, many people who are trying to guess when they might travel, also choose (as they are free to) to not avail themselves to the information available online.

Today, once again, I am thankful for you. The blogging community who shares our hopes, dreams and realistic referral guesstimations based on the current CC@AA trends. The wait is long and rough but being here with you makes it SO MUCH BETTER! Thanks for hanging out here...I'm happy to be waiting alongside you.