A Long Overdue Update

I know, it's been awhile. And to be honest, none of us can really be surprised. :) But I have the tiniest bit of news to report, so a new blog post it is. Referrals landed today in Europe (I think they probably landed here as well, it's just that everything is closed for Columbus Day), and they cover through March 28, 2006. It's a bummer for a few reasons. First, there were rumors that these referrals would go through at least March 29 - in fact, several agencies told their March 29th families that they were in. I haven't heard from anyone who had this happen, but I hope that their agencies give them a good explanation. It's hard enough to be waiting this long, but it's a million times worse to think you're in when you're not. Going through March 29 would have not just meant an extra day, but meant a much larger batch numbers-wise - the polls show that a large number of families were logged in on the 29th. It's also been a long time between batches - the last batch was posted on August 21 - that's nearly 2 months ago. The CCAA was closed for the first week of October, but most people thought that the referrals would be sent before they left. No such luck.

So, what does this mean for us? Well, I wish I knew. No one knows what the CCAA will do next. They could send another batch in 2 weeks or 2 months. They could refer two days or twenty two days. I have long since given up trying to guess, since I am almost always wrong. I do know that we are 20 LIDs away from our LID. That includes some weekends in there, and the polling data shows that there are a lot fewer April LIDs then March. There is also the whole attrition thing - people who have dropped out or switched programs. That polling data is running at about 44%. Yes, you read that right - nearly 44% attrition rate, and we're still moving this slowly. And if you just want to look at number of days referred, in the past year the CCAA has matched 41 days of LIDs. (I know, it's shocking to see it written out like that to me too) So if they kept their pace about the same, regardless of the lower number of families remaining, we would have 6 months left. Hopefully it will be less - much less - but at least we are in the home stretch, right?