Our Home Study Visit!

Our home study visit went really, really well yesterday!  Our social worker, J.A. is so nice and down to earth.  This was our 5th in person meeting with her (about 12 hours total) -- so we are pretty comfortable around her and she knows us really well by now.  Still, it made us anxious to be at this step where our home and family life was truly on display for the purpose of evaluation!!

We started with a basic tour.  We started in Jack's room first.  She loved the art work on the walls (all hand crafted by Jack Riley himself) and said it was fun and neat :)

Then on to Morgan's room.  She liked the built in dresser/changing table/desk and how pretty everything is.

We showed her our bedroom and bathroom next -- she didn't even walk in!  She just peeked in and then we moved on to the living room and kitchen.  She said we have a cute house :)

Next we went downstairs and showed her the storage area and laundry room.  Then on to the play room and family room as she expressed surprise at how big our little house is!  That's everyone's first impression...our house looks tiny on the outside until you come in and walk through both floors.  Our downstairs is the same square footage as our upstairs.  Then we went into "daddy's den" although we didn't call it that -- we just said this is an area just for us and I think I mentioned it was our only "kid free zone" in the house!

I think overall the cleaning and organizing paid off.  Typically I keep a fairly clean house -- so basically I weeded through some old toys and I washed our floors, cleaned the bathroom, etc. -- took me about a day and a half.  It felt like the same work I did when we sold our old house.  Kind of putting accents on the positives...ya know?

We talked about our neighborhood and neighbors and we explained how Jason's family grew up in this house and how Jason grew up just down the street.  We're close to shopping centers, grocery stores, parks, playgrounds and schools.

We went over our dossier paperwork and she complimented me on my organization and said we're really doing well with everything!!

We discussed culturally based activities and what we do for fun!  She played with Morgan -- who was a doll!! and when Jack came home she talked with him a little bit too.  Jack was so cute, although very, very quiet.  He was smiling and in a great mood (YAY!!) and showed her his box of musical instruments.  He did request a drink and asked me for help -- so she did hear his little voice once or twice.

Our home study report (a 7-10 page document of our lives from birth until now, our motivation to adopt, financial information, health information, etc.) should be completed within two weeks from now.

We mailed our I-600A application to immigration (this is a BIG step) and once we recieve the few pieces of paperwork we're waiting on (our physicals from our doctor's office) we can wait for our immigration approval (taking about 1-4 months) and finally our dossier will be complete!!  From then it needs to be state sealed and copied several times over and finally, finally on it's way to Ethiopia!!!!!!!  Our dossier should be in Ethiopia by August (rough guess on my end) and from then we'll wait 12-18 months for our referral.  So I'll stick to describing it best as HURRY UP TO WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!