Home Study is D.O.N.E.

It's been forever since I updated this blog, but that's mainly because I've been so consumed with the piles of paperwork required to complete our homestudy this past month. We stumbled across a stack of savings bonds while cleaning out the office one day, and the combined total was enough to pay for our homestudy! (Don't you love found money?) I figured that was a sign that we should bite the bullet & have one done, and so we began the daunting task of collecting all the information required, scheduling appointments (a difficult task at the best of times, given Ambrose's crazy schedule), and filling out the mountains of paperwork. I was amazed to find that because our fingerprints were done electronically, the results came back within HOURS, not weeks. And then, at the end of all that, came our actual home visit, which was more stressful than I thought it would be. It's not that I was nervous our social worker would see the house, and run screaming in the other direction...it's just the thought that another person has the power to decide whether or not you can become parents again, and the home visit is the culmination of everything leading up to that decision. So even though I knew better, thoughts like, "What if she says NO?!" kept running through my head all afternoon, and by the time she arrived I was a nervous wreck. Luckily, that didn't last very long, and the home visit went so well, and we had so much fun chatting that the social worker ended up staying an extra hour! We worked with Amy Imber of Connecting Hearts Adoption Services, and I highly recommend her. Amy worked quickly & efficiently to finish our home study in record time--3 weeks from the time we started background checks it was done--and immediately put us at ease during the home visit. She also had great recommended agencies, attorneys, and consultants based on our wants & needs. Our next steps are deciding whether we want to use a consultant, or just choose an agency/attorney on our own, and beginning the adoption grant application process. But that's for another post. ;)