Travel Cost

No idea, it so depoends on airlines and how many days notice, and then distance!One thing to help might be to sign up for the travelzoo deals, so kind of stay on top of who is having what sale and for where. Just to kind of get ideas which airlines to watch for. I think Orbitz has a similar "top deals' email alert.

This is one of the hardest categories to budget for. We were "trapped" out of state waiting for ICPC for 17 LONG days. Our hotel should have been around $3000, however the manager felt horrible for us so he discounted the bill by almost $1000. He also upgraded us to a suite after the first 8 days. So you may want to let the hotel know why you are in town. The manger of the hotel actually got to wittness us getting the baby, since it was a baby born situation and she had been in cradle care for a few days. He actually teared up. The next morning we had several gifts waiting outside our door from other guest who had heard the story, and from hotel staff. Our rental car really shocked me. We had it 17 days and only drove to the store and back to the hotel less than 300 miles, but they charged up by the day not the MILES so we ended up paying $1000 for the car. They would not work with us at all. Just plan for a buffer in your travel budget since you never know how long you will have to be traveling.

Thank You so much as we are close to becoming active travel has become one of my main concerns. I guess ill come up with a budget then double it. I see my savings dwindeling before my eyes.

Our travel wasn't bad, we booked one ways each time with about 16 hours notice and it was $268 each way (Denver to Sacramento). If you are lucky enough to get a carrier like Southwest or Frontier, they stay pretty reasonable and don't hike up the prices for no advance notice.

Thank You That is what I am most worried about the flight I am hoping that we can stick with southwest ill remember to check frontier too.

We didn't think to tell anyone we were adopting but with everyone stopping us asking why all the baby gear and no baby, the staff found out quickly. I KNOW Frontier held the plane for us as we had to run for the plane once we got through security and it was past time for take off. Granted we were only 5 minutes late but they really went out of the way to take care of us.

I know that it is a little off topic, but I don't understand why JP was "trapped" with ICPC. I was under the impression that before you went to pick up the child that you had to get ICPC approval. (It might be that we are looking at an older child not an infant)

Our situation was a baby born situation. We found out about the match and left the next day. The normal ICPC wait in situations like this is 3-7 days (we have been told). The adoption agency in Iowa, dropped the ball and did not send all of the paperwork that our home state needed. So our ICPC packet was piecemilled together. We finally called our home state agency when we figured out what was going on and they sent both Iowa and our homestate ICPC agencies everything they needed.