Home-study 101

Our home-study paperwork getting ready to be mailed
2.27.12

Our agency requires a Hague-Accredited home-study from an accredited agency, which basically means it is super detailed, long, and it has to make sure every i is dotted and every t crossed.  It's the gold standard for adoption home-studies.  It took us almost a month to get the paper side of the home-study done.  Fingerprints, background checks, references, education, pictures, biographies, physicals, form after form after form ...  Once that was turned in and approved, then we moved to the next phase, the visits.

Saturday morning we had our 4th of 5 visits with our home-study social worker.  Going into our home-study visits, we weren't really sure what to expect.  It's a little nerve-racking because without a home-study approval, you cannot adopt.  Thankfully our social worker is super nice and made us feel at ease.  She's been doing this for years, and she has been a wealth of knowledge for us as this can be a little bit overwhelming at times.  Our visits have pretty much included every question you could think of.  B and I joked we felt like we were being interviewed for some big job, and then when we thought about it, we kind of are ;)

We're very happy to be nearing the end of this phase.  We have one more visit left, so in the meantime, we're making sure we've done all the required reading, and we're getting together a few documents for the next phase of the process.  I was sitting in church yesterday morning and I couldn't help but thinking of our boy, and my heart was just overwhelmed with love and longing.  I'm so grateful that the Lord is right now watching over our son.  Little man, your mommy and daddy are praying for you and can't wait to see your sweet face ...