Home Study Scheduled!!!!

We got a call from our new social worker and I am happy to say SHE ROCKS!!!!! I have been so worried about this HAGUE home study because it has a lot more requirements than the old NON HAGUE ones. A few years ago they had the Hague Convention that put extra requirements on international adoptions. All counties involved agreed on certain requirements that made things much more difficult for adoptive parents. One requirement is that the home study involves many more components including a ton of education (which is good) and 4 social worker visits. All in all, the time to complete a Hague home study is much longer than it use to be and most agencies quote 3+ months to finish the full study. UGGGGG!!!! So, I was really worried that the home study process would be drug out and if any of you know me well you know I like to move fast and get things done. Well, I was happy to say once again-- OUR SOCIAL WORKER ROCKS!!!! She was so nice and totally open to moving quickly. She said she could move as fast as we wanted and that we could have everything done quickly. I was sooooo happy after our conversation and I cant wait to have our first meeting in our home next Wednesday morning!!!

I have almost all our home study paperwork done. Literally my list of like 25 things is almost completely done with the exception of our final DR appointment next Friday to complete the forms and the kids medical forms. We have done our live scans, drawn labs, completed our criminal record statements, written our autobiographies, created our disaster plan and a ton more things under our belts. As soon as the final pieces of our home study packet is complete, I will begin putting the paperwork for our dossier together.

For all of you who have not done adoption before, this is the sequence of events for China Special Needs:

1. Home Study- takes about 3 months on average

2. File for I800A (immigration paperwork allowing us to adopt an orphan)- takes @ 5 weeks
3. Meanwhile compile all paperwork for dossier and once the I800A approval is back you can get everything authenticated- this takes @ 2 weeks once I800A is back
4. Send dossier to China and wait for your Log in Date (LID)- takes from 2 to 3 weeks to get LID
5. Once we are logged in, we could get our referral at anytime-- sometimes a week- sometimes 2 months- just depends. Our agency usually matches within a week or so
6. Once we are matched with our new little girl, the process has many more turns but all in all, from referral to travel ranges from 4 months to 6 months. I pray we will be more towards the 4 months but we will see!

So that is the run down until referral. Once we get our referral I will break the steps down again. I am so excited about all this and I cant wait to get moving on this process!

I have been very busy with the end of the school year almost here. I only have a couple weeks left and then summer-- yaa!!! I am so looking forward to relaxing. I still will have my private practice work to do but my normal "work" will be done. Boy are out of school on June 16 and then Kevin and I leave for Haiti on June 21. Not sure I have mentioned it on my blog or not, but Kevin and I are going to Haiti on a missions trip with our church. I will post more on this trip later but it is going to be amazing!