Home Study

We completed the last part of our home study today. I was nervous not knowing what to expect but it was not bad at. First, we had a fire inspector come out to check the house & all was fine. When our caseworker got here we gave her a tour of the house & she checked to make sure meds & cleaning supplies were out of reach, made sure James' gun was locked up & fire extinguishers were available & outlets had safety covers in the boys bedroom. She then had to interview each family member in a separate room. The questions were to get to know us better & hear about our childhood. I was nervous my childhood sounded too perfect because I had hardly anything negative to say but I did manage to remember the time my parents gave away my pony without telling me first & broke my heart. ;) I know, my family is pretty awesome & that was like the worst thing that happened in my childhood. Love you mom & dad! The interview lasted about an hour for each James & I but only about 10 minutes per kid. She said the kids did not rat us out so we should be good. ;) So now we wait. It will take 8-12 weeks to get the home study prepared & then approval for adoption. While we wait, we will need to write a coversheet to sell ourselves to CPS caseworkers so they will want to open our file to choose us.

This is how the process works...once we are approved, our homestudy will be sent out to CPS caseworkers who have cases with boys who fit what we are looking for. The caseworkers will then select 3 families out of all the homestudies they receive. Not clear on how they choose 1 from the 3 but once it gets to that point, they send us the case file of the child. At this point the child has no idea that anyone is interested in adopting him. Once we read the ENTIRE case file of the child's past & present then we decide if we want to adopt the child or not. If yes, then we meet with everyone involved in the process to be approved as the best family fit for the child. We then will have our 3 meetings with the child before he comes home to stay forever. This whole process can take anywhere between 9-24 months depending on the CPS workers. So, another journey in our lives where I have no control & get to trust God through the process.