Snow Days and Checklists

With our unexpected snow days, we were able to accomplish a lot for our homestudy. The amount of paperwork for this process is a bit overwhelming, but I organized everything and made several checklists to help keep us on track! We have been working hard to send off background checks, schedule appointments for physicals, request records and birth certificates, ask for letters of recommendation, etc. I have nearly everything sent off, requested and written for this phase of the homestudy, so now we get to enjoy WAITING for everything to come in and be processed! We passed our home inspection with the social worker (Alexis didn't say anything inappropriate or talk about us being mean parents - yay!) and we have a second meeting with her next week for individual interviews. After that, we will have one final meeting with her and then we will continue to wait for all of our homestudy documents to arrive back in our hands. We hope to have the homestudy completed by the middle of February, but we are at the mercy of government agencies fulfilling our records requests. We are also busily working on our parent education courses online, and fulfilling the reading requirements that our agency has established. The courses have been, surprisingly, very informative and thought-provoking. What a challenge it will be to parent and provide a home for this little girl - but how rewarding and what a blessing it will be! We know that much of adoption is a waiting game, but we are quickly realizing that we can use this time to prepare ourselves, Alexis and those around us for the rewards and challenges ahead.

I also have a video from a documentary Lisa Ling produced that I want to share as well - it gives me inspiration and motivation to see families at the completion of this journey and the joy they are experiencing. I am not very blog-savvy, so I don't know how to add it to this post! I will try to post it separately.