We had our House Assessment this past Wednesday. I haven't had 2 seconds of free time to blog about it but it went GREAT! Really, really great!
Of course, I'm an optimist and this is something you should know right off the bat! :)
The girls and I cleaned the house for about 5 hours on Wednesday. It was pretty stinkin' spotless! I made a list for each of them of things they could do w/out my help while I tackled all the harder stuff. Ex:
Emma - Sort, fold & put away your clean laundry. Pick up your toys. Put the toys where they belong. Help your sisters organize the game shelf.
Our sweet DHS lady, Mrs. Teresa arrived almost right on time.
She was precious beyond words and I immediately liked her!
She was at our home for exactly 1 hour.
She answered my questions before I even asked them... how thorough is that?
We should be receiving our finger print cards within 2 weeks. We have to get that taken care of asap.
We also have to get scheduled for our DHS adoption classes. They're 7 hours long each time and we have to go to 4 classes and then there's a 5th class that's only 3 hours long. I have to call to get that scheduled tomorrow. We've been warned that since we're already parents... and believing parents at that, the classes are pretty much going to be simply "jumping through hoops". But I'm willing to do just about anything to bring my little boy home so we're going to jump through hoops! :)
Also our Home Study will begin within the next 3-4 weeks. We will have 3 different Home Study meetings. The Home Study people have 3 months to get us "completed". Mrs. Teresa said that would put us at the end of September w/ finalizing our Home Study.
Then our exciting day will arrive here! It's called an Adoption Party. It's in October. The thought of it makes me sad. It's basically a lot of DHS children waiting to be adopted within the OKC area & the families interested in adopting them. I know I'm going to want to tuck several of them into my purse, but Matt has made it pretty clear that we are "starting w/ only 1 adopted child".
The Adoption Party will be a carnival theme with balloons, popcorn machines, inflatables and clowns. Our girls are encouraged to go w/ us, but they hate clowns so prayers in this area would be much appreciated! At the party, we will get to meet several little boys who are a good match for us according to a form we filled out at the beginning of this adoption process. What Mrs. Teresa said is that we are to let her know who we feel a strong connection with and they will arrange a weekend sleep over as soon as we're ready.
I almost started crying right there and then when she said that! October. We will more than likely meet our son in October!
And we've found out that this adoption is going to cost us nearly nothing at all. The State covers most of our fees.
So if anyone is even "sorta" considering adoption, you should definitely at least get your paperwork started, it won't hurt anything at all and who knows, you may be able to provide a safe, loving home for a child who desperately wants/needs one.
Also, we thought we should let ya'll know that we've changed our paperwork for a little boy, 4 years old and "younger". Before, it was a little boy between the age of 2-4. We have opened our options to take in a child under the age of 2 and would really LOVE it if he were under 2. Please help us pray about that?
So now that you have been assured our adoption will not cost us much out of pocket money, I want to share a friend's
blog with you who's adoption IS costing them a little fortune. First, they were adopting from Ethiopia and made quite a large investment with the Ethiopian agency they were using. Then they found out that Ethiopia was closing their doors on adoptions. And they lost that money. Now they are adopting from Congo. They could really use help in raising their adoption funds. Every little bit helps.
If you don't mind, could you mosey on over to their blog and get in touch w/ them if you'd like to
help them bring their son home? Thank you so much!
Love,
The Morrows
