We have a date!

Yay! I talked to the homestudy social worker, finally, and we've set up a date for our interview! I'm so excited to actually have it on the calendar! (She'd sent me the dates last week but I never received them because her computer got a virus and ate her emails. Grrrr...)

She's going to try to combine the four appointments into 2 by having extra long meetings. So we're getting together on New Years Eve and then again on January 7th. She seems super sweet and laid back, so I feel like it will go well. And, she said she wants to have it completely done before she goes out of town the third week of January. So that works in our favor!

As soon as our homestudy has been revised and finalized by both agencies, we can immediately send it off with our I-800A imigration form. This is when the US government approves that we can adopt. It takes about 2-3 months to hear back- so the faster we can submit the I-800A, and get it back,  the faster we can send our dossier to Mexico! Can you tell I'm chomping at the bit to get through this paperwork stage? LOL!

I do love all the paperwork, though. It makes me feel like I am DOING something. I have a feeling I am NOT going to like the time period after all the paperwork is submitted and we are just sitting around twiddling our thumbs waiting to hear something. But, I know God has lessons to teach me in that stage, too. Patience. Lots of Patience. I'm learning that the adoption process is very sanctifying....


Unfortunately,  we still don't have any answers from the licensing department about the use of bunk beds. In order to fit everyone, we have to use a set of bunk beds and the health inspector said he didn't think they were allowed. If we can't, then we're going to have to build a bedroom (and, of course, a bathroom)  in the basement for Brent and I.

We had been planning on doing this in the future (I think we're going to need some space for US with 7 kids in the house...), but we were hoping we didn't have to before the adoption. Too Expensive!  There is nothing in Maryland law about the use of bunk beds, but the social worker thinks that it might be  a licensing regulation.

So we're still waiting. She did say that the construction wouldn't have to be finished before the homestudy is complete, thank goodness! That would have slowed us down drastically!

Here's a little sweetness that God sent our way....
We have to submit a bunch of photographs of each room of our house and the outside for our dossier. I wasn't too thrilled to send a photo of the outside of our house because our landscaping stinks. Our grass is weed filled and very un-lush. We definitely need to do some work on the front gardens, but let's just say "it ain't even in the top 10 of the priority list".

I had jokingly said we needed some snow to make our cute, little red rancher look better and hide the ugly garden. Well, we got it- didn't we! A whole lot of snow! That massive amount of snow hid a multitude of sins in our landscaping. Sooo, now Mexico will think we have an adorable little house AND think the bushes under that snow are just as cute! Brent got a bunch of good photos!

Here are some of the things I'm doing over the next few weeks...
-a notorized letter from our health insurance company saying that the adopted children will be under our insurance- was expected to be here a week ago and still hasn't come....hmmm....
-finalizing a date with the psychologist to do our evaluation
-go to State Archives in Annapolis to find a copy of a document that I need another copy of
-start our 10 hours of adoption classes required under the HAGUE convention- thankfully, they are online! We plan on starting them while Brent is recovering from sinus surgery on the 28th! He won't be able to do much else, so perfect timing!
-find out how many post placement visits state in Mexico requires so we can prepay for them according to HAGUE regulations
-have a conference call with socialworker on the specifics of our dossier paperwork! I love this! I'm giddy just thinking about doing this part! I should have been a secretary!