Tuesday, March 9, 2010

It's Off!!!

Our mongo stack of paperwork (well, this round of it, anyways!) is finished!!!!

Hubby just sent all of it via email to our home study provider! Whoohooo!!!! Here's what all was included:
  • Birth certificates
  • Marriage license
  • Hubby's autobiography
  • My autobiography
  • Hubby's "Me As A Person" (two-page list of questions about yourself)
  • My "Me As A Person"
  • Our Transracial/Transcultural inventory (one-page list of questions)
  • Financial statement
  • Most recent tax information
  • Releases for criminal background/sex and violent offender registry checks (for me and Hubby)
  • Releases for Child Protective Services history checks (for all five of us)
The way our home study provider works is that we are not assigned an individual social worker until after this paperwork stage is done. So now, we'll be assigned with the social worker who will do our home visit and put together our final home study document. I talked with the supervisor this morning and she said depending on how flexible our schedule is, we may have our home visit within a week or so!!!

So, the remaining steps (as I understand them...and I could totally be missing something!):
  • Medical exams (including TB tests) for all five of us - scheduled for next week
  • Blood work and urinalysis for me and Hubby - scheduled for this week
  • Employment letter (they get this for us from Hubby's employer)
  • 4 Reference letters (they get these from the references we gave them)
  • Local Police and Sheriff record check (we have to go to our county sheriff's office and request something that states we do not have a record.)
  • The home visit (which we've been told will take a big part of one day)

That's it! We just have to wait for all of our approvals and then once our home visit takes place, she said it would take a couple of weeks for our social worker to put it all together. They will send us and OFA a draft, we make any necessary changes, and then we're ready to put together our I600A (petition to US Gov't to allow us to adopt)! After that's done, we start putting together our dossier (documents necessary to send to Congo) and wait for our referral!

So like I said, this is just the first round of paperwork, but I'm glad we're on our way!!

We're coming, babies!!! Mommy and Daddy love you so much and can't wait for you to be home with us!!!

4 comments:

Stori said...

Oh Missy, I remember this stage so well. I remember that I was so amazed that I had so much love for this child (children, boy, girl). Again, it reminded me of pregnancy. During the very early stages, you have no idea what you are getting, you can't see or feel them, but you still have so much love for them. I remember thanking God for that love, because I had questioned if my feelings would be different with an adoptive child. Of course they are not!

Andrew Wiggins said...

How exciting! That's a major step.

Gaga said...

Congratulations!!!! Glad that part is over with. It's so hard to hurry up and wait........I'm so anxious to hear who our new grandchildren will be!! Sort of like waiting for that first ultrasound. The more you know about your precious babies, the more real it seems.

Anonymous said...

Wow! You are on your way!
I am praying!