An inspirational video

Praying for Haiti

Hurricane Earl is on a path to potentially do a lot of damage in Haiti (like they haven't had enough already). Please pray for the people there. We know that the Lord is protecting our child(ren).

Fingerprint results are back!

It took six weeks, but our case worker received the fingerprint results today! We are getting so close to this thing being done! Our case worker (have I mentioned how much I love her?) sent a draft copy of her home study report to our agency to make sure everything looked okay so far. We have a few edits to make, but things are looking good.

We have had one hiccup. Our county sheriff wrote a letter for us saying we were in good standing with the community and he tried to be helpful by having his letter notarized but it is missing language on it that the Secretary of State requires. We have to ask him to either give us a new copy or redo the letter. I hate to ask him that but these things have to be done a certain way.

Stephen didn't have any problems at his shrink visit. I received my letter from them already and his letter should come later this week. We laughed about it later but both of our psychiatrists (both were male) were very good looking. We decided it was a requirement to be "hot" to work there.

The Shrink

I had my visit with the psychiatrist today. It was at the Cedar Center in Cedar Rapids. The guy was very nice, smiled at me a lot. The visit felt kind of silly, but it's necessary to meet the requirements of the Haiti Government. My visit only lasted about 25 minutes. He asked me questions about my history, whether I had ever had a concussion that led to loss of consciousness, seizures, my general mood, thoughts of suicide, things like that. The bill for that quick visit was $280! It does get billed to my insurance though, so hopefully they will pay it.

I was nervous during my visit. He asked me if I had ever visited with a psychiatrist before. I said I hadn't and I think he sensed it. When I walked into his office he had three chairs to pick from. I asked him which chair he preferred for me to sit at and he said it didn't matter and "it's not a test". That made me crack up because I was so conscious of doing something that he might psychoanalyze.

Stephen's visit is tomorrow.

Things are coming together!

Our case worker wrote us over the weekend and said "we're getting close!" It will be nice to have the Dossier done and out of our hands. We received our passports this weekend. We have written the letter to IBESR (Haiti government) and sent a copy to our adoption agency to review. Our references have responded quickly (thanks everybody!) and we have the privilege of seeing the shrink next week. The shrink visit is the last thing we have to do for the home study. I probably shouldn't call him a shrink huh?

Home study visits complete

Our visit with Jan, our case worker went well yesterday. We met at my workplace to go over the 9 page report that she wrote about us, made corrections and finalized a few things. She has been giving us great advice. It's an answer to prayer that she is a believer in Christ and understands the process that we're going through because she's been in our shoes. I told her at the end of our meeting yesterday that I really felt we had gained a friend through all of this. It's been a huge blessing!

Today I am working on our cover letter that goes to Haiti. It basically introduces ourselves and expresses the desire to adopt from their country. It was a bit difficult to get started cause how do you write a letter asking somebody to let you have a kid from their country? But the Lord really guided me during the writing process and I feel like I have a good first draft.

Stephen and I plan on taking a short vacation next week before school starts. We decided to stay in Des Moines for a few days. We'd like to go to the Apple Store and the Woodright Shop (Apple for me, Woodright for him) and want to stop at the Living History Farm for Stephen. He takes his kids there every year for a field trip and needs to do a little research.

On Thursday we will no longer be Iowa State Fair virgins! We have never been there and decided this is the year to go. We are both anxious to try deep fat fried butter and food on a stick!

Last home study visit tomorrow

Thankfully, our home study went very well so we don't even need to meet in our actual home tomorrow. We are meeting our case worker in Cedar Rapids to go over the report and finalize the information she needs to finish stuff up for us.

We both got our blood tests back and they were all okay so that's one more thing off the checklist!