As many of you know, we are in the process of applying for our second adoption. We are very excited about the idea of expanding our family. This time around has been tricky! We have gone through a lot just to get all of the proper paperwork completed, physicals done, fingerprints done, etc. We hadn't even gotten to the Home Study yet! Well, today we FINALLY started the Home Study! WHOO HOO!! Those close to us know that we have been getting our house cleaned up and pulled together for this meeting. I was asked a number of times by friends or family about what this process includes. So here goes...
If you want a definition of a home study, you can check out Wikipedia. I normally do not think that Wikipedia is a reliable source of info, but after looking at it, it is pretty accurate. But what did it look like for the Stape fam? Well, we filled out TONS of paperwork, had our fingerprints/background check done twice, health physicals done twice, recommendation letters sent in, financial and tax info handed over, checks written, drug tests taken twice, more paperwork filled out, paperwork refilled out when they changed the forms, etc. Today was the first of our interviews with our social worker, Faith. (Interesting that her name is Faith, huh? Gotta have a lot of faith in this process!)
Faith arrived at our house this morning. Yes, we cleaned our house like crazy people yesterday and today. Even put Joel's sister and her kids to work last night. (We invited them to dinner....and then put them to work. :) Thanks, Gyolai's for always helping us out!! We owe you big time!!) Our house is cleaner than it was when we first moved in! It will be nice if we can keep it this way!
Faith sat down with us to go over a bunch of questions and paperwork that we have previously filled out. We talked about things like our community and the racial make up of it, safety, location of schools, hospitals, fire stations, police departments, size of our lot of land, size of our house, smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, bedrooms, bathrooms, Gus' preschool, employment, openness to children and what we are willing to accept, adoption education, family profiles, letters to birthparents, contracts and finances. In addition to this, Faith took a tour of our house. She took notes about what our house was like, what we had in each room, etc. Gus was really excited to show of his bedroom to her. Showed her his books and the pond out the window. She of course, oohed and ahhhed over it all for him. When she looked at my office, we got on the topic of Thirty-One. (She LOVES Thirty-One! I see that as a bonus!!) Then came the bad part....the poor lady looked in our garage and in our basement! YIKES!!! Both are what we consider storage units! So much junk stored in both of those places it is no wonder she didn't get lost! Oh well....that is life!
We have our next meeting scheduled with her for next Thursday. Stay tuned to what the rest of this process looks like!
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