The Home Study Visit

This has been one busy week! Not only was our social worker here, but on the last day she was here, some guests from out of town arrived. They called me the day before and said they were coming to New Day and wanted to visit us at our home. Then even the same day, later in the evening, we had a very important Skype call to the US for paperwork. Sooooo, our social worker is here all morning doing interviews, our guests arrive during that time and have to wait until she is finished, then when they leave that evening, we are busy doing the important Skype call!! Oh and one more thing that day, as it it wasn't enough!! It was the girls first day back to school! So we're also trying to home-school them and shuttle the others back and forth to New Day for preschool and Serena to her new Chinese teacher. Needless to say, it was difficult for the home schoolers (Shawna, Elise, and Elizabeth) who had little help from us that day! Shawna and Elise work well on their own with questions here and there so they did fine. Elizabeth (who does an English program), however, is only in the first grade which pretty much requires a full-time parent. Whew!! What a day! I was glad that day was over!! But a little more about our home-study visit.

On Tuesday, our social worker arrived to begin our home-study. We had several hours of interviews and a home inspection. She was here 2 days. She interviewed Shawna and Elise, boy were they nervous! I kept telling them not to be nervous, just be open and honest. When asked how they felt about all the foster kids, Shawna said she said it was good but hard sometimes. I told her that was a good, honest answer--nothing wrong with that! They did fine. All went well to our knowledge and we just have to get our hands on a few pieces of paperwork before it can all be finished up. Although we asked, we really didn't get an answer to when it would be completed. She definitely did not want to be pinned down to a time-frame. Our agency quoted us a 6-8 week time-frame if memory serves me right. We still need to get our physicals done for the whole family. Since we can't go to our local doctor as if we were in the states, we have to locate someone here who can do fill out the forms in English and run all the required tests. Hope it's not too difficult a task! All this needs to wait until Randy returns from the states. I'll locate the place and make an appointment while he's gone. As soon as he returns, we can get it done. There's also a couple of documents we have to get, other than that, we've already given her most everything else. It's always a relief when one more step is accomplished in this journey! We will rejoice together when the home-study is complete and in our hands! Until then, just keep it all lifted up. By the way, as soon as we have this, we will be able to begin to apply for grants.