So Many Decisions

Once we had decided that we were ready to start the adoption process, then we had lots of decisions to make.  Do we adopt internationally or domestically, if internationally - from what country, what age, how many, boy or girl, which agency to go through, etc.  We were so overwhelmed by all the choices and decisions that it was almost paralyzing.  My first thought was that we could adopt a child from Scotland, since we are so interested and involved in Scottish heritage.  After some online research, we discovered that children from most developed countries are not available for adoption outside of their own country.  Just like American children are not given to adoptive parents from other countries, Scottish children are not adopted to non-Scottish parents. 
We also considered domestic adoption.  I spoke with several agencies about domestic adoption and the process just didn't seem like one we would be interested in.  Not to say that domestic adoption isn't absolutely great for some people.  But for us, the fact that we would be paying for expenses for the pregnant mother (medical, clothing, housing, food) during her pregnancy with the chance that she could decide up to 48 hours after delivery to keep the child was a chance we weren't willing to take.  I asked my friends who have children in high school if there were any girls in their schools who were pregnant and wanted to give their child up for adoption, but I got nowhere with that approach.  We even looked at the foster to adopt option.  For this, most of the children are older and sibling groups are the most common option.  Keith and I both agreed that for now, we were really only interested in infants and a sibling group would be quite a challenge for two parents who don't have much experience with children (I am an only child and Keith has one half-sister). 
The last option was international adoption.  But from where would we adopt?  In doing online research, there were so many options.  China, Colombia, Ethiopia, Russia, Rwanda, Ukraine, Mexico, Honduras, Thailand, etc., etc.  Where would we even start to look?  Some wonderful friends of ours had just adopted twin boys from Ethiopia and I had a great opportunity to visit with them in New Mexico several weeks after they brought the boys home.  I had never really even considered Ethiopia before, let alone twins, but after being around them for several hours, I realized that they really weren't that different from any other kids I had been around.  I started to think to myself "I really CAN do this."  The reason that they had adopted from Ethiopia was because they have a family member who married an Ethiopian man.  They felt like by adopting a child (or two in their case) from Ethiopia, they would already have someone in their family that the child could relate to and who could share aspects of their culture.  That got us to thinking about adopting from Colombia.  Keith's aunt is from Colombia and we were thinking that it would be great to have her be able to teach our child about his or her Colombian heritage.  So we started looking into the Colombian adoption process.  Our great idea hit a snag when we realized that adoption from Colombia requires at least a one month consecutive stay in the country.  Neither Keith nor I have jobs that would allow us to be gone that long from work. 
So we started looking at other countries.  I got names of adoption agencies (Gladney, Hopscotch, Children's Hope International, Adoption Related Services, etc.) from friends who had adopted and we started looking at their websites and requesting information packages from them. 

Next... why we ended up with Armenia.