Homestudy

So we are moving right along......so far John and I have completed 3 out of 4 homestudy visits. We were interviewed seperatly and as a couple. The last one is scheduled a week from this Friday!! Our social worker will make a visit to our home. Hopefully she has nothing but good things to say about us in her report, and once that is completed we will make an appointment with the INS.

The reason we have to make a visit to our local INS office, we have to recieve permission from the INS for our child to be able to lawfully enter the United States for the purpose of being adopted. After this approval has been given and the child has been adopted and brought to the United States under a visa and/or a green card issued by the INS, then we can then apply to the INS for the child to become a United States Citizen, just as if the child had been born to the adoptive parents as their biological child. This process could take up to 60 days...just waiting! The exciting part once we get the OK...then all of the documents we have been working on will be bundled and this will complete our Dossier. The Dossier will then go to Ethiopia, and we will sit back and just wait for a child referell!

John and I have to decide before next Friday on if we are just going to ask for a girl or a boy, or just be suprised!! We are definitley asking for a baby 18 months and under.

All for now!

Lucas

Lucas is our 10 year old "little brother" . He is the one in the photo holding the red guitar! John and I became what Big Brothers and Big Sisters call a "Big Couple". We decided to donate some time each week, and looked in to seeing if we could join Big Brothers Big Sisters. Once it was decided we would be ok to apply. The next step was filling out an application online. After about a week, our case manager called us. He told us he would be our case manager and they he would make a visit to our home. He then told us about a new program called Big Couple. This allows us to be match with a child and do this as a couple!

So this past September we were matched with Lucas! Lucas lives right outside of downtown KC. We spend a few hours each week hanging out with Lucas. Dorian is his 9 year old brother.....Dorian currently does not have a Big Brother or a Big Couple to hang out with, so we had him over with Lucas on Sunday. We had great time playing video games, guitar hero and doing Karaoke!

We are especially excited about this evening. Since we have met Lucas, John has enrolled him in a weekly judo class. Lucas is getting promoted from a white belt to a yellow belt. He will be really suprised tonight! We will take some photos and post them soon!

This is Dorian playin some video games!

John and Lucas playin some Guitar Hero!

John reporting here (though Amanda is hovering nearby)...

We both took the day off of work yesterday to take care of some of the documentation we need to get our homestudy started. We both had physicals and we got our police reports from the Kansas City police department. Fortunately, both things came off without incident (looks like that embezzlement rap from '98 has been expunged from my record). In our 75 step process, we are through step 16. We are awaiting our marriage certificate from the state of Nevada and we will have everything we need to submit paperwork to the agency to start our homestudy. Next steps are to get our reference letters.

With our extra time yesterday, Amanda and I took in Juno at the local theatre. Highly recommended and exceptional performances by everyone in the cast.

Tonight, we will be taking Amanda's Grandmother Betty out to dinner at Stroud's (Famous for Fried Chicken) for her 86th birthday! I should sleep like a baby tonight after falling into a food coma.

I guess that's all for now.