What a great couple of days we've had!! My heart is just dancing!! In chronological order, here goes:
On Thursday, we got to have our second home study meeting with our fantastic social worker. It was a really good meeting and she has every confidence in us and our adoption of a special needs child like Melissa. Our social worker is just a fantastic lady and mother to 11 special needs children herself, so a vote of approval from someone that has been there and done that is nice to hear. She is finishing up the home study, collecting the needed license copies, etc. and we should be able to wrap up the actual document soon! She also provided us with some contact information for other families who have completed their home studies through her and I was pleasantly surprised to hear a name and email that I was familiar with through the Reece's Rainbow community! We are excited to introduce ourselves to other families that have traveled similar journeys.
Then on Friday we got some really big, really wonderful news!! Melissa's current country has decided to go forward with processing the international adoptions that still qualify under their new laws. From what we understand, we should get to forgo the 3-month waiting time!!!!
The timing of both just about had us on cloud nine! We no longer have to just spin the wheels and watch them not really move. Now that we have the homestudy pretty well complete, we are getting the USCIS in motion and getting some power of attorney and a letter of intention over to the country. We will be doing some additional online training to meet Hague requirements. (A combined 40 hours of adoption training in 7 months isn't bad!)
We also have to get the ball rolling on the fundraisers. It sounds like they may be trying to move the processes along quickly going forward. I still just have a cluster of ideas that need to be formed into organized events/sales some how, so news will come of that once I get my act together!
It feels SO fantastic to go from stalemate to actual progress. We can't wait to hit the ground running--once our feet hit the ground, that is! :)
P.S. My husband so kindly unlocked the ability to add comments to the section for Memos to Melissa. We had a good laugh at the page that I added solely for the purpose of people being able to write notes to our beautiful daughter and then I never noticed that people couldn't write anything on it...Sorry, folks, I am new to this blog thing!
You don't know me. I stumbled upon your blog accidentally, but I have been BLOWN AWAY by your tremendous selflessness, devotion to your family, and extreme love. I am inspired by you and hope that you will inspire others to adopt children that need and deserve as much care, attention and love as sweet Melissa will have one day when she makes it to her new family.
ReplyDeletePlease don't hesitate to contact me if there is ever anything that I can do to help.