Stick A Fork In That Home Study.... IT'S DONE!!!

Wahoo, we completed our home study yesterday!  That is our final requirement to be eligible to adopt with our agency, so now we can 'hurry up and wait'!

The agency director (who will be our caseworker) and the social worker (who will be the birthmother's caseworker) came to our house at 10 am on Monday morning.  Caleb was Mr. Personality when they arrived, showing them all of his cars and grabbing both of their hands when it was time to show them his room.  As he held their hands to go down the hallway he yelled out, "Run!! Fast!!!" because he wanted them to all run down the hall together!  As you can probably tell, he's a shy child.  ;)

Although Caleb was being cute, he was also a big bundle of energy and excitement with visitors in the house.  I was relieved that my parents were in town to come get Caleb at 10:10 on the dot so we could focus on the task at hand!  The home study itself went really well.  I think it helped that we knew what to expect and what kinds of questions they would ask.  It also helped that I understood they'd look at our house but that it wasn't a white glove test to see how clean the house was.  I didn't make Bryan powerwash the exterior of the house like I did for Caleb's home study! Ha!


We completed the inspection of our home, our interview together and our individual interviews.  The whole process took a little under 2 hours and we were done!  I've already heard from the social worker that she completed our home study today and will submit it to their head social worker for final approval.  Once we have final approval, we will pay our approval fee and our profile can be shown to birthmothers.  We will also have our profile on the agency's website so that birthmothers visiting their site can learn more about us (and other prospective adoptive families, too).

Bryan and I spent a fair amount of time over the weekend researching and talking about which risk factors (drugs, alcohol, cigarettes) we will consider.  We attended our agency's 6-hour training on Saturday and one of the many topics they covered was medical risks.  We have a true peace about the parameters we have set for this adoption and are thankful that Bryan has access to great medical research - and has the ability to understand it!

Our agency director said they recently had 2 birthmothers who they had to send to another Christian agency purely because they were having children of another race and she did not have families who were open to adopting outside of their race.  We are open to a child of any race so that alone makes me hopeful that we may be chosen quickly.

Most of all, we desire for God's will to be done in our lives, in our child's life and in the life of his or her birthmother.  We cannot wait to see how God shows His faithfulness, provision and love for us through this next adoption experience.  We pray that we will be a reflection of His love as we go through this journey to grow our family!