Sweet Success!

Okay so we're not done yet, but the agency got back to me after reviewing our documents and told me they looked great. Thank goodness for the triple checking - - and the re-dos. I owe so many of our friends and family a big thank you for writing referrals and witness statements not only once, but twice! But it paid off. I feel very relieved.

We are still waiting to hear back from our social worker on the home study draft. I meant to email her to check on things but work got busy and I got distracted. I hope to check in tomorrow to see where things are. Once we get the home study finalized it is on to the many stamps of the many documents. Each day is getting us closer to referral!

Dossier Paperwork is being Reviewed!

Today I was able to collect the rest of the paperwork and send it in to the agency for review. This probably won't mean much to everyone else but it is a huge step! For the last 5 weeks we have been working to collect documents from multiple copies of birth certificates, certified copies of our marriage license, employment letters, doctor letters to letters from the sheriff saying we don't have any warrants. I can say - though they could be all wrong and we have to do a bunch of stuff over - that I finally got everything together. I caught a bunch of mistakes earlier on and had to re-do somethings, but now I think we're okay. I don't know how long it will take for the agency to review, but it cannot really move forward until the home study is finished. So as long as our documents are correct, we are ready to go! As soon as the home study report is finished I will take all the documents and get some additional stamps and seals and such to say they are all valid and then off to the governments they go. I fell very relieved part is almost over...

HOMESTUDY MEETINGS ARE FINISHED!

I awoke around 1:30 am partly due to this dumb cold and partly due to nerves. I think I managed to sleep for maybe another 2 hours before the alarm went off early this morning. After drinking some coffee (very necessary after the shorten sleep) we walked through the house and picked some stuff up. I think we were both a little nervous to say the least...

Johnna, our social worker, was great. Very easy to work with and really, now that the process is over it wasn't that tough, but so stressful! Today she came to the house. We spoke for about an hour and then she did a walk through. She seemed impressed with the house - definitely with the new third floor master.

More importantly the cats stayed quiet, and even though the dogs managed to jump the fence, they didn't scratch at the door (though Wage did bark a little).

The homestudy report should be completed in about a week and a half. I should have all the other paperwork together (and hopefully have had the agency reviewed it) so as soon as the report is ready we can move on! We are betting that we are around 6 weeks away from referral and getting closer every day.

Tonight we went to the Bair's for dinner and had a little mini-celebration. So with bellies full and a big weight off our shoulders here's to a really good nights sleep!

I have been really, really sick this whole week. Two visits to my doctor resulted in the lovely diagnosis of a cold. I don't really think I have ever had a cold like this! I missed the entire week of work, which I don't think as ever happened due to illness. Regardless, after the second appointment yesterday I was given an anti-inflammatory for my throat and a decongestant that seems to be working better than the over the counter brand I had been using. Yesterday, despite feeling sleepy from the medicine I did a bunch of the cleaning. Brian came home and finished up his homestudy homework.

Today I am braving the snow and going to try to get the last of our dossier paperwork together. We have a couple of things that still need notarized but I think we are going to try and do that tomorrow after our social worker leaves. Today I am on the quest for two certified copies of our marriage license. I know we are getting close. We still need to collect some family pictures, but we are almost there. The goal is that when the homestudy report is handed to us - sometime this coming week - we are ready to move on getting the dossier finalized.

I cannot tell you how depressed I was to miss so much work this week knowing that I have days left to take off to finish this paperwork. I tried to save up time so that I would be able to take off plenty of paid leave when the baby is here and I am just burning through it with days off for paperwork and illness. Life is too short to worry about it and I know in the end it will work itself out, but man, it made me mad.

I am so glad that tomorrow marks the end of the homestudy. The house looks great. If I can figure out how to bathe the dogs without wrecking it everything will be fine. I hope that once this is done with I will be able to sleep because that has been difficult for me lately. If not, I think I will have to get something to help me sleep, but we will cross that bridge later.

I have started a pretty extensive list of to dos to keep me busy during the "wait time." I have been told it is the most difficult part of the process. I am sure it will be harder than I can imagine, but I am truly looking forward to the time when we have been approved and the paperwork is finished. Hopefully my list of things to keep my occupied will do just that.

Alright, here's crossing your fingers to well behaved dogs and neighborhood and to a clean house tomorrow.

Update!

We have seen the social worker twice now. Last Sunday was our individual meetings. They were a little tough I thought. Not because she asked us too hard questions or because we had anything to hide, but because it made me really think about our family stories and they are certainly interesting to say the least. She, I think, tried to make us feel better by telling us she would be gentle in how she worded things, but just thinking about how she needed to be gentle made me cringe! Ah well! So we aren't perfect. I think everyone probably knew that by now...

After the individual meetings we went to the holiday party. There were probably around 200 people there. I was a little overwhelmed. We went from the meetings to family mayhem. Though I will say for that many families all the children were really well behaved! We sat at a table with two families that had adopted from Guatemala. Oliver and Michael have both been home for about a year now and they were both super cute! The families were nice to talk to and both said that Guatemala was beautiful and easy to navigate. They said a lot of people they were contact with spoke English. I think it made Brian feel good to know that both families had a pretty easy time traveling, though it still feels like we are a long way from there.

I went to our Drs. office today and stood around for about 45 minutes... BUT I left with our notarized letters! They weren't easy to get and I was getting very frustrated. I decided it was the absolute best thing that I went personally cause I don't think we ever would have gotten them otherwise. In addition, I got home and started going through all the paperwork again. I realized that half of what we had done was wrong. The Sheriff's letter that we waited and waited for had an incorrect date for Brian's birth date and a bunch of the letters for our references and witness statements were wrong. Those were all my fault and I absolutely hated calling our friends to ask them to do it over again. There are so many details!

I started a list of all the things left to do for this round of paperwork and though it is a ton it is manageable. As long as I get everything done correctly there shouldn't be any problem with being done by the 20th. Here's hoping!

Next steps: Our social worker comes to the house in the morning on the 20th. That should be the last time we meet with her. She said that she expected to have the homestudy written up by the end of that following week. I need to have all the paperwork together so the last thing we are waiting on is the homestudy. Once it comes in and we receive the I -171H (permission from our government to adopt) I will get to run around to government offices for awhile to get all the necessary stamps. Then we wait!