Jacob and I are moving along quickly completing our paperwork! We drove to our county sheriff's office last week and got our local backgrounds checks and notarized. So our federal, state and local- done! We sent off our USCIS application I600 A, US immigration application. We completed all 5 required online parenting classes, sent off for our notarized employment verification, completed our orphanage application, and will be getting our doctor's letters tomorrow. There are many more forms we've accomplished, but I can't think of them all right now! A fun thing we are working on is a family photo album that the birth mother and/or orphanage can view to help match us with a child. It will be so awesome to get our paperwork completed and our dossier submitted. I think we may be able to do this in the next 3-4 weeks!
We completed our 2 home study visits yesterday! After getting the house organized and being a little nervous for our home study visits, we came to find it was a very enjoyable and pressure free experience! We'd all like to say that our house is always in perfect order, right? In fact, sometimes I feel like all I do everyday is continuously clean and pick up after my busy kids - keeping it organized is the key to peace with a busy family. And we've read that the social worker is not looking at your house keeping abilities or how well you decorate, they just want to make sure you have what is necessary and safe to care for a child and also to get to know the family. But, let's face it, who isn't going to go the extra mile to get everything extra clean and organized and make it look like the happiest home-making home ever for your home study?! It's like the difference between when your just having your neighbor stop by for coffee, or when your own mom my is coming to stay. This is like the latter, you do that extra deep dusting and scrubbing and add cookies, coffee and a smile! So, needless to say we've had a busy week! Of course she never even really looked inside the closets, cupboards, showers or under the beds, ha ha! But at least we were prepared for anything. Our social worker laughed and added that she baked cookies and had coffee for HER social worker as well, as she was going through a home study herself! She was very nice and throughout the interviews we chatted about adoption, kids, travel and all sorts of things. It was a great experience and now all we have to do is keep chipping away at the paper work remaining.
