Home Study

So, we had our Home Study yesterday!  It was really exciting getting to this point.  I wasn't really nervous - even though I think I kept trying to talk myself into being nervous!  We knew from a couple of different Agency orientation meetings that the Home Study was NOT a white-glove test, just a time for the social worker to get to know us and check out the safety of our home.  EVEN THOUGH I knew this, I still spent a couple of hours cleaning the night before.  Nothing major, but it had been a while since I'd spent any significant amount of time cleaning the house, so there were some areas that NEEDED attention.  And, let's be honest, nobody wants to show off a DIRTY house! 

The actual home study was COMPLETELY painless.  Bethany was AWESOME and was VERY easy to talk to.  We talked mostly about our families, our marriage, why we decided to adopt, and some potential challenges of raising an adopted, African kid.  Not really a big deal.  Most everything we talked about was the type of thing we talk about with our friends.  But we did talk A LOT.  Bethany was here for about 4 and a half hours, and we talked for about 4 hours and 15 minutes of that time!  In retrospect, it was a LONG time, but it really didn't feel that long while it was happening - I guess it's easy to talk about yourself :)

The other really cool thing is that Bethany was able to connect us with another couple in the area who is a couple of months ahead of us in the process.  They also don't have any biological kids and are adopting from Ethiopia.  I talked to her on the phone today and LOVED her.  We're meeting them AND another family for dinner tonight.  The other family has a 3-year-old boy who they adopted from Ethiopia, and are in the process of adopting their second child (also from Ethiopia)!  I'm REALLY glad to meet other adoptive families in our community.  I think it's good for us to connect with people "like us," and it will be even better for our baby to (hopefully) have some Ethiopian friends. 

So, back to the Home Study.  Bethany said it would take a couple of months to write up and finalize the Home Study, so we're just waiting for that.  Once that is finished, we'll send it to Immigration, and they'll schedule us for our fingerprints.  Once they run our fingerprints, they'll send us our approval letter.  At that point, I THINK the dossier has to go through one (or maybe 2) authentication process, and then we'll be on the waiting list!  So....  I'm HOPING that means we're on the list by the end of June, and also HOPING that's not too optimistic!