Here's the latest...

So, our big news is that we are ALL DONE meeting with our social worker for our homestudy. Woo Hoo!! Not that she's not a nice lady, and we haven't learned a lot from our talks, but we've spent 10 emotionally exhausting hours over the past month talking with her, and we are both glad to be done. We met with her three times, twice at our homestudy agency's office and then last night at our house.

I have read tons of blogs describing their home visit, and the one thing I got from all of them was that the family freaked out about the home tour, cleaning excessively, etc. only to find out it wasn't a big deal at all. You would think with that knowledge I would have learned something, but nope, I cleaned excessively and freaked out anyway! And of course, I also learned that it was totally not necessary. The boys took her on a speedy tour of the house, where she stepped into each room briefly. Deep cleaning not required, although on the upside, my house looks awesome today! We finished up all of the things she is required to talk to us about, and then we asked her some more questions. Mostly our questions relate to transracial adoption and how we can best raise an African-American daughter to have a strong identity and be proud of her race and culture, and our social worker has been a wonderful resource for these questions.

I wish I could say that we are all done with our home study, but we aren't quite there. Here's what we are waiting on:
1) Chad's CPS (Child Protective Services) check for Marion County. We needed these for everywhere we've lived from age 18 on. We've received them back from 5 other counties or states; only this one remains. It is the last document we are waiting on, other than

2) Griffin's physical. Because of where his birthday falls, we have to wait for his 6 year well child visit to use this physical, or the date from last year's will be too old. So this is scheduled for 11/18. If Marion County gets a move on and returns Chad's check, then we'll move this one up.

3) We are finishing up our education requirements. We each had to read 3 books about adoption. I'm 50 pages away from being done with my third, and Chad is almost done with his second, but still has one more to go. I'm trying to encourage some speed reading! :)

And then we will really be all done! We need our completed home study to send off a form asking for permission to bring an orphan into the country (we send off an I-600A, and get back an I-171H once we have gotten permission, in case you are keeping track). The fee for this form goes up on November 23rd, so we really hoped to get it submitted before that, but the odds aren't looking too great at this point. If you're reading this and are the praying type, we would love some prayers for documents to be returned quickly, and for us to get this done as quickly as possible. Once our home study is done, we have almost everything else ready for our dossier (this is the BIG packet of papers that gets sent to Ethiopia), and then once that's sent, we'll officially be WAITING!

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Yeah, I'm sure that's something that's been worrying you to death..."I want to go out tonight, but Jana might update their adoption blog and I won't know!" Fear not, loyal readers (all 3 or 4 of you). Now you can subscribe via e-mail to get notification when I update. I follow a few blogs that offer this, and I love it. Otherwise I obsessively check everyday. Yeah, I didn't say I'm proud to be a freak, I'm just acknowledging a fact.

So...go there and fill out the form. Then rest easy knowing you will be as up to date as can be. Whew, crisis averted!

Getting Closer!

I knew going into the adoption process that there was a ton of paperwork, red tape, and hoops to jump through just to get to the really hard part...waiting for our referral. And there really has been! I love to research and love to make a checklist and cross things off (sometimes if I do something that should have been on my list but wasn't, I'll add it on just so I can cross it off. Is that sick?), so luckily it hasn't been too bad.

We are working on our dossier. This is a huge stack of all kinds of documents which gets sent to Ethiopia. It includes our birth certificates, marriage certificate, employment letter, proof of health and life insurance, a letter from our bank, criminal background checks, a financial statement, physicals, and a whole bunch more. Part of what goes into our dossier is our homestudy. Our homestudy consists of meeting with a social worker/adoption specialist 3 times (once at our house where they check it out), doing a bunch of education, and gathering yet more paperwork (most of the stuff listed above, only slightly different, so you have to get it twice!). We are currently super close to being done with our homestudy...yay!!

We've met with our social worker twice so far. The first meeting was 3 hours long, and our second meeting was 4 hours. Wow, we were wiped out after those! This Monday she comes to our house. She'll meet the boys, walk through the house, see where the baby will sleep, and check to make sure things are safe. Then we'll meet for a couple more hours and wrap up all of our talking. These meetings have been really good at getting us to think about things we might not have otherwise, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't going to be happy to be done. We each have to read 3 books about adoption as well, and so far I've read 2 1/2 and Chad's read 1 1/2. And, just today, we finished the 8 hour online training our homestudy agency requires. We were so happy to cross that off the list!!!

I think our homestudy will be done right around Thanksgiving. We're waiting on a few background checks to come back from other states, and Griffin needs a physical done so we're doing that at his 6 year well check. As soon as our homestudy is done, we should be about ready to send off our dossier! We're getting closer, baby girl, we're getting closer!