We are in...let the crafts begin!

Yesterday we had our final interview with the social worker and officially got the approval that we are now done with the home study! Great news and so relieving that that part is over. We already finished our family book as you all have seen, so we are just that many steps ahead. Things are moving fast and now we are just busying ourselves to get ready for our garage sale in July to raise some money.

One other thing that has officially begun is my craft season preparing and nesting. Check out the pics below of some of my beginning projects...

Here is the diaper bag made from an old skirt and two retired curtains






Here is the bird mobile for the baby's room...





Here are the collages ready for framing...





More crafts and pictures to come. I will just say this...my knitting is out of control!

Exhaling...

All together now...exhale...thanks, we needed that.

So the home visit took place on Saturday and go figure, it went great! Alexis came to our house and we spent six hours chatting. The interview was really wonderful - both of us had a chance to talk about our childhood, high school and college experiences, and our relationship with each other. It was a lot. Beyond just talking about ourselves, we also talked a lot about what it means to adopt, be a part of an open adoption and possibly a transracial adoption. Alexis even threw us a few curve ball questions for us to think about how we would react. We really appreciated the fact that she is an adopted child and had a lot of insight for us and is an excellent resource for our hundreds of questions. All in all, she is great and we feel lucky to have her helping us through this process.

We feel quite exhausted after this weekend - not only because it was a long day on Saturday but really because of the way we built the home visit up in our heads. We were nervous, not about "passing" the visit, but rather about how close we are really getting to the end of this 'hurry up and wait period.' It has been paperwork, fingerprints, family book making, etc up until now...now we need to talk about our motivation to adopt and our pasts...now we actually are reflecting and not just doing. It is exhausting to reflect and process.

We also had a lot of anticipation for what this home visit would be like. Of course we googled and checked out every blog out there to skim other experiences, but in the end still had no idea what it would be like for us. To our surprise the meeting was pretty uneventful and non-climatic. It was just a talk, nothing more, and quite easy. Of course for the rest of the evening I replayed every moment of the meeting in my head (and out loud to David) wondering if we impressed upon Alexis how much this meant to us and how great of parents we would be...thank goodness David is so patient! But as I said above, the visit was great and we feel good.

We have a final follow up meeting with Alexis in two weeks where we will see a draft of her write up and answer any final questions she may have. I look forward to seeing her final product! Then we have our class in June and we are officially in the pool. Can't wait to dive in.

Stay tuned...

Lots to Update

We haven't updated the blog in a while - we have been busy. First, we have finally finished our family book and are ready to share it with the world! You can find the final version here. We spent days locating appropriate pictures and finding the right words and we are so happy with the final product - 15 copies are on their way to our agency for showing to birthparents! Thanks to Kathy and Josh for helping us put the final touches on the book!

Whew! Glad that hurdle has been jumped.

We also found out (finally) that David's background check has been cleared. So really the only thing we are waiting on is my medical form. My appointment is next week, so we can basically check that off.

Some more exciting news is that we are scheduled to have our homestudy interview completed this Saturday! The social worker called us yesterday and set up our 5 hour (yes, 5 hours) visit for this weekend. We are busy cleaning and trying not to be nervous.

Thanks again, can't wait to update you all after we have the homestudy interview complete!