Home Study Completed

On Saturday, our social worker from Dallas came to meet us and interview us for the home visit portion of the home study. It went great! First, she interviewed both of us together with questions about our philosophy on parenting, on discipline, and about our home life. Then she interviewed us each seperately and asked questions about our immediate family and what it was like for us growing up. It all went very smoothly, and we were finished with everything in less than 2 hours. We think she will be a great ally and resource for us through the adoption process.

One of the things that we talked about was some of the common health problems that she has seen in her experience with kids adopted from Ethiopia. She said we could pretty much expect our kids to have parasites and scabies, but attachment disorders, institutionalization effects, and fetal alcohol syndrome are not very common in kids from Ethiopia, which is great to hear. It will take about two weeks for us to receive her written report. Once we have that, we can submit our paperwork for USCIS approval to adopt. Please join us in praying that the approval process will be speedy.

We had a great weekend with being able to complete this final part of our home study as well as having our friends from Colorado come and visit us. They brought homemade Ethiopia-shaped sugar cookies and they were delicious! Fortunately she took a picture when she was making them because we had eaten most of them before we even thought about it...that is how good they were. Thanks friends!

That is a pretty good resemblance, don't you think?