where we are

I know I haven't updated much lately. We're still "in the system" as we wait to find out if the judge is going to accept our homestudy or if we are going to have to have a new one. It's a frustrating process, the waiting. And waiting. And not knowing what is going on, just waiting.

We've got to provide a home study every quarter to our agency in IN until finalization. We're at the point where if we don't hear something soon, we'll have to do yet another homestudy (this would be our fourth) and chances are, it won't count toward finalization.

It's frustrating, but what can you do?

He's ours, always has been, always will be. We just need to do one little thing to give him our last name and be able to get a birth certificate and social security #. But it's out of our hands as we wait. And wait. And wait.

I can't wait to start a blog on the adventures of parenting. But I want to wait until our "forever family" day is here and start fresh with that blog. So for now I'll continue to add sporadic posts here. Parenting is fantastic, and we love that little boy so much. It's amazing to see how he changes every day. I can't wait to share it with you soon.

Our profiles are in =)

We mailed off our profiles on Friday- and then took off for the weekend. We went to Windy Hill to relax, and had a great time.

We also received an email this weekend- our homestudy update is also completed. It looks good =)

That's all for now, but it feels good to have two things checked off the list!

Homestudy day

Well, we had our homestudy update today. It went well, we really enjoyed chatting with her. We showed her all the things we had done (including the nursery and the guest room) since she was last here.

We also talked about changes, Mike's job change (almost no on call hours starting in Aug!), my change from SAF being bought out to Noah's Ark, and the flexibility that I have with my business. We also talked about family changes (since we have a new niece since the last time we saw her), and other changes in the family.

We changed some of our preferences too, to make us more open to more situations. Hopefully something good will come out of it :)

Homestudies are now good for every 6 months now, so we'll have to do another update in another six months. Hopefully something happens so we don't have to!

Our check in call and a quick vacation

Sorry the post is a bit late, we had our check in call on Monday night, then left the next day for a mini-vacation.

The call went ok. Typical stuff- don't need any new profiles, no news to report, etc. It was good to talk to her, but it was basically almost the same stuff.

We did learn one very interesting and very important thing that we need to correct. Apparently our home study (bringing back the homestudy issues (and more issues) we had with the homestudy lady again) does not reflect our preferences enough, and could limit us if some particular type situations came up if they are out of state. Apparently if they come up in Texas, it's a bit different since we won't need our home study immediately for the ICPC . But if they are out of state, we could run into some problems. We've tried emailing the homestudy lady again (according to our Lifetime coordinator, it's pretty normal to make adjustments periodically with the home study), but as usual, she is not responding to our emails or phone calls. And still hasn't made the adjustments we asked her to do a while ago. So frustrating.

So, we are going to contact our wonderful adoption lawyer and ask for some recommendations for someone to do a home study for us. He said we'd need to do another anyway most likely, using a home study person from our county. So, we figure we'll just go ahead and see about redoing it. How frustrating though.

We will still be considered for insta matches- we are just limited a bit and would have some issues if a few particular situations came up that we technically are not home study approved for.

We had a nice little vacation, a much needed get away. We flew out early Tuesday to San Francisco, and rode the trolley cars, went to Fisherman's Wharf and walked down the side of Lombard Street.

We got up Wednesday morning, and boarded the Golden Princess for a trip from San Francisco to Vancouver. It was SO neat to go under the Golden Gate Bridge on a cruise ship. We arrived in Vancouver on Friday morning. We literally got off the ship, then waited in line at the Port of Vancouver to get in line and board the Norwegian Star for a quick trip to Seattle. We got off the ship, walked around a little bit. That's one more state to mark off my list of states to visit (now, I only have North Dakota, Montana and Alaska!) Then, we caught a taxi to the airport and flew home. We enjoyed it a lot. It was my fourth cruise on Princess and Mike's third, but the first for both on Norwegian. It was an interesting experience. Anyway, we are glad to be home, and are relaxing, doing laundry, and basically trying to catch up.

We'll call in tomorrow or Tuesday to see what we can find out about a new home study. Ugh, how frustrating!