Next step- home study

The next step in the adoption process for us is the home study. If you're like me, you don't really know what that means. Going into it I sort of thought it was just a study of your home... you know, like the name implies. But it's more than just a case worker going around your house looking for reasons why you're an unfit parent. 1st it's a LOT of paperwork. A LOT. We have to get fingerprinted, background checks, criminal record checks... pretty much anything in your past gets checked up on.... we have to submit a request for all the 911 calls made from our home! Which, I still have to figure out because we don't have a home phone line. Cell phones? I don't know. That's one of the questions I'm asking my friend Noelle on Friday when we meet for coffee and I bring my giant file folder of paper work with me and pick her brain. She's adopting a baby boy from the Congo and is #1 on the waitlist!

So, back to the home study- it's lots of paperwork, lots of questions about your past, your upbringing, relationships with your parents/siblings, parenting ideals, etc. There are 12 pages of "stuff about me" I have to fill out, and Andrew has to fill out those same 12 pages about himself. After we get all the paperwork finished we'll have the meetings. I'll be interviewed, Andrew will be interviewed and then she'll interview us together. Going more in depth into the questions we already answered and I'm sure bringing up other questions.

We've asked for a girl, around 2 years old. That's the age we think will fit well in our family, that way we'll have a 4, 3, and 2 year old. Little stairsteps :)

We still have a long way to go, the home study process takes about 8-10 weeks, and I'm pretty sure that start time is after the first visit, which we still have to schedule. We can't schedule that till we get through this mountain of paperwork AND we replace the carpet. If we're friends on Facebook you read about a week ago we had plumbing issues that resulted in poo carpet in our master bedroom. Well, we ripped that out and bleached the foundation, but now our master bedroom has no carpet, which I'm sure does not bode well for a home study! We're working on the carpet thing, just have to get people out here to measure so we can get people out here to install!

On the money side of things- we have the money for the home study, YAY! That's a big hurdle and God has faithfully provided thus far. Right now we have exactly what we need to pay for the home study. After that we still have a long ways to go, but we do have a couple fundraisers coming up. My friend who sells Scentsy has offered to do a Scentsy fundraiser (more on that later) and I'm getting tshirts made soon (more on that later too!). Be on the look out for more blog updates.... hopefully we can knock this paperwork out and things will start to feel like they're moving faster!

p.s. God bless you if you can make sense of this whole post. My thoughts are all jumbled together and it's late!