Pack rats

The bean reading to the little man after bath time.

My little pack rats.

How do they fit in there with all that stuff?

The immortal words of the Pointer Sisters say it best...

I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it!

Our home study is done and in Portland waiting for review!! It has been there since Monday, but the Ethiopian Program Director was out Monday and Tuesday. She takes anywhere between 5-7 days to review it and send corrections to our social worker, who them finalizes it, notarizes many copies and mails them to us. Once we get it in the mail (I might have to start checking the mailbox everyday, instead of waiting for J to get home), we will take the next Friday off and head to Yakima for our fingerprinting. I also will finally get to send my dossier in to AGCI. The home study is the final piece of it that I have been waiting for.

I have been really worried about what I am going to do to keep busy during this waiting period, but God finally gave me an answer. More to come on that in the future.

Home Visit

(Here is the family playing outside this morning, while I was straightening everything up for our home visit.)

The most wonderful social worker in the whole world just left our house. Our home visit went great and the kids did fabulous. (I know no kids are perfect, but I really didn't want to deal with a meltdown while we were trying to have a conversation with her.)

She just has to add in our home visit and then should have the completed study sent off to Martha early next week for review. That means we will be heading to Yakima with our I-600a application by the end of the month! Yeah!

Cleaning

In another world this would be me right now...

But instead this is how I feel...

I do not use the word hate often, but dislike is not strong enough of a word to describe how I feel about cleaning. I literally hate, abhor, detest, loathe, and can’t stand cleaning! In my dream world I would hire someone to do it for me. It is the one responsibility that falls on me by staying home with my children that I would trade off to someone else in a heartbeat!

Our impending home visit this Saturday, was enough motivation to get Spring Cleaning done and even finished in record time.

Kilt or Skirt?

The little man loves his sister's dress-up. His dad gets a little miffed that there aren't more dress-up options in the house, so for Christmas the little man got a cowboy outfit. Does he ever wear it? No. Instead he loves this skirt. I told J that if it bothers him that much that his son loves a skirt, we will call it a kilt instead. Heck, it is plaid and Mel Gibson wore one in Braveheart so it must be ok. (For those of you wondering-he does not go au natural, but wears a diaper underneath!)

For the sake of fairness, here's a picture of the Bean with the cheesiest grin ever. She loves to wear my Africa necklace. She and the little man give it kisses all day long. I can't wait until their sister is here and they actually get to give her kisses!!

3 down, 1 to go

We headed up to Bellingham the past two days for 2 more meetings with our social worker. (We had an "unofficial" one last month at the AGCI gathering.) Anyway, I had this image of those police questioning scenes in movies when they are sitting in the chair with the spotlight on them being hit with a barage of questions. Luckily for us, it was nothing like that at all! It was much more like sitting on the couch with an old friend talking about your life experiences. Our final meeting is scheduled for the March 1st. She will come down for the home visit and meet the kiddos. It sounds like we should have our home study complete by the middle to end of March which would be fabulous, since we can't move forward until it is done.

The first Friday after it is complete, we will head to Yakima to be fingerprinted again. This time for the Department of Homeland Security. Once we get our FDL (Favorable Determination Letter) from them, we can offcially be a number on the waiting list. Our time spent waiting for a referral can be anywhere from 2-6 months, although it is averaging about 3 1/2 right now. After we receive and accept the referral, we can wait from 3-5 months for the adoption to go through the courts and for us to travel to pick up our daughter. Our Daughter! Oh, that sounds so amazing. AGCI lays it out much more clearly in their Ethiopian Program Overview if anyone is interested.

Releasing Americans from wealth in Jesus’ name

Check out this post by Shaun Groves, recording artist and Compassion International team member. The post brought tears to my eyes.