Progress

What a busy time of the year!! So much has happened in the last few weeks. Just recently we have had our last home visit, and our home study is just about complete. We received an email today with the first draft of our home study attached. We should be completly finished and ready to send it off to the USCIS within a couple of weeks. Really we don't have a lot to do except WAIT. I am getting used to that word!! Whenever we send something off, we wait until we get it back and then send it off again somewhere else and wait again. Right now we are waiting on my birth certificate and the agency recommnedation form to come back from being certified.
On a more interesting topic, a couple of weeks ago, Kevin's roomate from college came with his lovely wife and three kids. His roomate, Leoul and his wife Koni are native Ethiopians. They were very excited and encouraging over our decision to adopt from their homeland. Leoul and his family are excited about embracing our family as we all will try to help Scout learn about her cultural heritage. Leoul belongs to an Ethiopian Christian church in St. Louis where they live. This is exciting to us because there is an established group of believers that we can network with while raising Scout. Leoul also gave us some ideas of traditions we could start in our home to tie Scout's heritage into our family. Evidently, Ethiopians celebrate just about every holiday seven days after we do. Kevin was pretty enthused about the idea of celebrating Christmas two times this year. I need some time to think about that!!

Our Home Study Application

This week we should be able to turn in our home study application and schedule our home visits. I've been told that compiling the paper work for the home study is the most time consuming, so it is definitely good to be almost finished with that! I am hoping that we did it correctly and won't need to go back and do something over!!