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!