Monday, June 23, 2008

Children's Services Letters Received

Monday June 23, 2008

Our child abuse clearance letters came over the weekend. We officially have all our documentation for our home study completed on our end. We are waiting to hear if my fingerprint results have come back yet. Mark's came back the week after we had them done but we were still waiting on mine.

We received an email update from the agency, they have formed another partnership with an orphanage in Ethiopia. They now have connections with 3 orphanages. This is good news. On the flip side they also stated in their email that once you have accepted a referral your invitation to travel is most likely going to take approximately 8 - 12 weeks after referral acceptance. At this time the court process will take place. We need to get through this home study first and wait for our immigration paperwork to come back before we submit to Ethiopia. Hopefully that won't take to long, we keep praying for things to move quickly.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Fire Inspection

Wednesday June 11, 2008

The fire chief came last night to do our fire inspection. He is coming back out tonight to give us our certificate and to make sure the smoke alarms are up and the plug covers are in. I didn't know our house had so many plugs in it until I started putting covers on the ones that weren't used. One more thing down on the list. We also got our local background check letters from the police department. We are moving right along.
I started the online training, it is a lot of information and mostly the worst case scenerio. I went through 2 of the 7 modules on Monday night and had to stop because the information was starting to bring on an anxiety attack. All the training is about giving you the information on what could happen, hopefully it doesn't happen. But I guess that is what training is all about giving you all the information even if it is a bit scary.
Our next home study visit has been scheduled for June 30. This one she will come to us and visit in our home for about 2 hours. We went ahead and scheduled the third visit for July 1 too. That visit she will come back to our home and do individual interviews, talk about stressful. This is where all the weird questions will come into play to see how each of you answer (i.e. your relationship in high school, tell me what happened and why you broke up).
We were suppose to have our physicals yesterday but Mark had to cancel because work is so busy and the doctors office rescheduled mine for June 17th.
I also completed my autobiography. I forgot how hard it was to write about yourself when you know people are going to form an opinion of you from what you write.

Friday, June 6, 2008

Fingerprinting Done

Friday June 6, 2008

We went yesterday for our State Background check and Fingerprinting. It took longer to drive there than it did to actually complete the process. Now we wait for those results to come back and on to the next thing.

We also sent in the majority of the paperwork we had to send in for the next homestudy visit to be scheduled. The social worker sounded a little surprised that we had so much done. It is not hard paperwork, it is more gathering information and making copies. The hard stuff is the autobiographies, it shouldn't be hard to write about yourself but for some reason it is. Our goal is to have that done this weekend. We are also waiting for a call back from the fire department to come and do a fire inspection of the house.

Still no names yet. We just can't find a name that we both really like. When we think we have one then another name comes up and we are back to square one. Good thing we have a little time for that.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Home Study Orientation

Wednesday June 4, 2008

Well we traveled to Upper Sandusky for our Home Study orientation yesterday. Another packet of information and more paperwork. We already started on the paperwork and gathering copies of information as soon as we got home. We have a reading list of 5 books we have to read. We got two of them from the Library but are most likely going to just buy them to have them. Our next home study visit will be scheduled when they have approximately 90% of the paperwork. I think I have 75% in the envelope ready to mail back already. So we are doing good - on a mission to bring that baby home.

We have scheduled our State background check and fingerprinting for June 5th and our physicals for June 10th. More paperwork out of they way. The good thing is a lot of the paperwork we have to do for the homestudy is the same for the Dossier so we can kill two birds with one stone.