Home study visits.........no Doug Wilson

Our first home study visit was on last Friday and our last one Wednesday and much to my surprise Doug Wilson did not show up with our social worker. I was hoping in addition to all of the deeply personal discussion we were going to be having it would be a mini-version of Moving Up (TLC home improvement show circa 2008) where the old owners love all of the changes we made. Despite no dramatic reveals the visits went really well!

It was really a painless process with a few tough questions but overall kind of.....fun? We got to talk about ourselves a lot.....who doesn't love that? Our social worker and her student are both really great and easy to work with. As you may know from reading the previous posts our social worker is actually the person we bought our house from (hence the "Moving Up" reference). I couldn't exactly read her reaction to all of the changes we made to our home, but overall it was quite positive! We had all of our smoke detectors working and a fire extinguisher which.......

were key I guess. She brought photos with her to show us what the house looked like when her and her husband purchased it and we had the opportunity to learn a whole bunch about the house and the previous few owners which was really cool. It was in way worse shape when they bought it to say the least! Interestingly she said she used to hear music coming from the living room at night on occasion but would check and nothing would be in the living room when she went in. Kind of freaky! If there was a ghost I think they may have moved with them because I've never heard it.......yet!

We also realized we have another connection, her best friend is the wife of one of my old pharmacy school classmates. It's weird how certain people are destined to connect and play roles in each others lives that you would never expect when you meet them.

I won't divulge on our blog about any of the questions and things we had to answer....I'm sure some of you that talk to me on a regular basis will hear about it but I wasn't sure if they would have an issue having that information posted on the internet. Needless to say we had to talk about a lot of things that will definitely make us more prepared to be parents had we not went through this process.

We also learned more about the process and what to expect in the next few months! More to come later about some of that stuff. Now we wait for the home study to be written up and approved/ notarized which hopefully will take a week or two. We need the approved home study to send in our paperwork to US Citizenship and Immigration to get approved to bring a child into the country. This approval is hopefully the last piece we will need to complete our dossier to go to China! We have almost all of our other paperwork completed for our dossier from our end, but now a lot of documents have to be state certified and authenticated. What that actually entails I don't know and don't plan on worrying about it since our agency does all of that. Hoping to have everything done and have our approval from US Immigration in a couple of months!