Home Study

Our homestudy is very close to being approved. Yippee!

These are some of the things it entailed:
Getting or creating the following;
Medical reports-(Physicals including tests for HIV, Hep A, B and C, TB tests, hearing,vision)
Autobiographies
Finger Prints
Employment verification forms
First two pages of the past three years of Federal income tax returns
Copy of bank statements
Copy of marriage certificate
Letter from therapist if in therapy or counseling in the last five years (that would be me)
Health Insurance info
List of all debts/assets
Description of Home
Three letters of recommendation (Thanks Guys!!!!)

Meetings with the social worker; Three times at her office, once at our house.

THEN...

This info was sent to our placing agency. They reviewed it and requested more info (specifically on the current equity of our home and a more detailed prognosis on my PAST Thyroid Cancer- reminded me of the Seinfeld episode,"Prognosis Negative.")

Soooooo, after just a few more steps we will move on to the Dossier process. The Dossier is composed of , for lack of a better term, "A shit-load of documents." Luckily some of them repeat, so we already have a good head start on that. The impending holidays may slow things down since everything needs to be notarized or certified or rectified or fossilized or testified to (Can I get a witness!) but I am hopeful we can get it together and get on the official waiting list soon.
Currently the wait for siblings is OVER 6-9 months and then an additional 3-4 months before traveling, once we are finally placed on the list. Big Sigh. I guess we will just do what we can and try to wait patiently for our children. I just don't want to look like this at their weddings.




As I sit here in my cozy house with a big cookie and a cup of coffee, I feel that it would be wrong for me to feel sorry for myself about how long this is going to take. I will try to avoid doing this. When I think about my potential children's present circumstances in Ethiopia, how can I feel anything but grateful for a what I have in my life? I do, however, feel sad that if it takes too long, my kids will never get to meet this guy...

That would be a shame. I already feel sad that they will definitely not meet Lummi. The holidays definitely have a dull pallor this year because of her absence. I really miss her.

She was always getting into her stocking.





I was thinking about is how cool it would be to be an adoption social worker. You'd really get to see how people live ( if freshly vacuumed dog hair free rugs is how you really live). I was thinking about how we were looking to buy this...

and how we were considering building one of these...




Would you get approved if you lived in a yurt or an earthship? I guess the yurt and the single unit earthship both kind of look like a traditional Ethiopian hut.


Maybe the kids would like it?

I didn't like the yurt. I think it was because when I opened the wood-burning stove there were almost three dozen dead birds who had flown in seeking warmth. I also didn't like living in the earthship as much as I thought I would. The bathroom smelled like, well, poop. It is great to use your water over and over and over again, but isn't there something you can do to make it smell less like an overused head on a boat?

One of the benefits though, is you can grow bananas year round in the middle of the desert.



I bet the most rewarding thing for a social worker would be the post-placement visits. If everything is going well, they get the satisfaction of seeing that they have helped build a family. That must be a sweet feeling.