First Visit!!!

Hey! Well, we got a call yesterday from our case worker, Vickie. She was calling to set up our first meeting. We scheduled it for November 7, which is next Friday...also Marks birthday! She explained that the first meeting was about hour and half too two hours long. She only comes to the house on the third meeting. The first meeting will be a joint meeting with both Mark and I.

She will meet with us in a conference room here at Elon. We are nervous and excited at the same time. She told us that the interviews will be very in depth and that they can be stressful. But, that we should be fine. We are anxious to get this started. After our meeting we will write another post to let everyone know how it went. Have a great week everyone!

NEWS! NEWS! NEWS!

Well, I know some of you are visiting the site often looking for new news. This is a slow process and it is a lot of waiting. But, we did get an e-mail from our case worker today! She received all of our paperwork yesterday and she will be contacting us early next week to schedule our first visit.

How exciting!!!! We are very anxious to get this ball rolling. So, thank you to all of you who visit the site often and for being patient with us. We promise to post news as we hear it. We love and miss all of you!

Hope everyone enjoys the weekend. We will write soon!

Home Study Bound!

We received an e-mail yesterday from the adoption agency stating that they were just waiting on 1 more reference letter and once it was received that we would be assigned a caseworker. WOW! We are getting closer. The home study date will be determined when we are assigned a case worker. We are anxious to get this process started since this is the first "big" step to getting all of this underway.

We hope all of you are doing well, and when we are assigned our caseworker we will post again! Have a great weekend!

Adoption Update!

Hello everyone! We received a letter yesterday from CAS telling us that they received our paperwork. They mailed letters to our references requesting letters from them with some information about Mark and I. They told us that once they receive all of the letters that we would be assigned a social worker and then the home study process would begin. Once it was started we would be looking at 6-8 weeks before completion.

So, the next step is really waiting. We will wait to be contacted by a social worker to set up our home study. As we hear more information we will let you know.

Mark and I want to give a special thank you to our family members who have helped us with every aspect of this adoption process. Without a loving family like ours, this would not be possible. Each of you has a special place in our hearts and our lives and we will forever be grateful for all you have done. Mark and I could not travel along this journey without our family, and we just want to say thank you and we love you!

Adoption Application Mailed and Vandy's ranked!

Well, we finally mailed off the formal adoption application today! Wow, it was so exciting to mail all of the forms, and it was a big packet. After reading all of the paperwork last night getting it ready to mail, I realized that I had made a mistake. The only thing we needed to mail in with the formal application was about 4-5 forms. I thought we needed to have all of the supporting paperwork together, like bank statements, background checks, and a ton more. Upon calling the agency this morning, the women sounded shocked that I had completed all of the other tasks of getting all of the supporting documents. She said I was way on top of things and that most people take a month to get all of those together. I wasn't about to tell her that I just simply miss read the directions.....she thought I was smart, so I was going to go with that...ha!

Anyway, all is mailed now we just wait for them to contact us within the next 14 days and they have a few other items to finish then we will be assigned a social worker to start conducting our home study. The home study can take anywhere from 2-4 months. We will let you know as we continue the process. We thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers during all of this. We love our family and friends very much and it means the world to us.

Also.....as all of you may know Mark is a HUGE Vanderbilt fan....and VANDY IS RANKED for the first time since 1984! Wow..that is a long time. He is super excited. He was listening to the game the other night on the computer, and he was pacing the house in nervousness until they won. I told him he was scaring the dogs! Anyway, they are 4-0 on the season and we hope they continue to win. GO VANDY!

We will let you know when we hear something from the agency. Have a great week!