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!