Homestudy visits completed!!!

Wow, what a way to spend Father's Day! Our final visit with our social worker happened yesterday, on Father's Day. And what's more, we were approved and deemed "qualified" in every respect according to the social worker. Yippee! Talk about a relief! And, how ironic considering we finally began our adoption journey on Mother's Day, and here we are getting our homestudy completed/approved on Father's Day! Now, let's just hope she gets it written up quickly and the sign-offs and approvals that need to happen go very quickly as well! I'm still hoping to get the notarized homestudy in time to deliver our I-600A to the LA USCIS office before we leave town next week! If we can get that and our fingerprints done before leaving, we'll be doing really well in terms of our status in the adoption process. We'll just be waiting for our I-171H (visa approval letter) so we can submit our dossier!

Now, for a little more insight into our visit with Cara yesterday. I know I can talk a lot. That's just something I'm known for. Especially when I'm nervous/excited/anxious. Well, trust me when I say that I was completely blown away by the fact that Joe was so busy talking and answering questions that I could barely get a word in edge-wise yesterday! No joke! He was so talkative that he couldn't keep his mouth shut long enough for me to finish sentences or ask questions! He'd just jump right in and finish answering for me, or trying to complete the question I was asking. It was so bizarre! I thought my husband had been abducted by aliens and they'd returned someone completely different! No more long pauses while waiting for Joe to speak up or answer something... he was all over it! Is it too presumptuous to say that maybe... just maybe, his excitement was kicking in a bit?! And he was all smiles when she left. I was still in shock that A) the "homestudy" was over and B) Joe was answering ALL of her questions instead of me! Trust me when I tell you this is a shocking turn of events! It was awesome to see the excitement he's feeling but been so good at controlling all this time in order to keep me relatively calm in the process.

A world away our children may already be out there. It's sometimes difficult when I sit and wonder about them. Are they still in their birth mom's tummy? Have they been born yet? Are they already in an orphanage waiting for us, or on the verge of that tragic situation that puts them in a situation of needing a mommy and daddy. It's painful to think that with all the excitement and anticipation we feel, we're excited about something that inevitably means a painful, terrible loss of some sort for our little ones.

Knowing that the soonest we could travel is October (that's if we get a referral during court closures and get through court when it first reopens in early October) that we're only 4 months away... 4 months. Of course, that's the SOONEST it could happen. It's very likely it will be later than that. If we get our I-600A submitted before leaving town AND get fingerprinted, we could be receiving our I-171H by late July. So, the big question is how long will it take us to get our referral? It could take a while, so I'm trying not to get my hopes up about the wait being too short. I'm just hoping we'll get to travel before the end of the year!

Enough of my ramblings for now. I have to go host a meeting and get back to work... it's so hard to concentrate on anything other than the adoption some days!