One More Step

Well, folks, we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel as far as the home study goes. That's the first important piece of the puzzle that needs to be completed in order to get the ball rolling for our adoption. It has included about 80 pages worth of paperwork, our autobiographies, two sets of fingerprints done for each of us, lots of money, three interviews with social workers and 12 hours worth of adoption/parenting classes in Denver. The only part left now is the last meeting with our social worker. That will be a week from tomorrow, the morning of the 17th. Once that's done she'll be able to write up our home study assessment up and send it all in to our adoption placement agency based out of Seattle. After they've processed it we should be hearing from their Thailand coordinator. She'll tell us all of the documents that we need to collect for the Thailand government, specifically. So, I'm hoping that we can get all of that together quickly and perhaps they'll send our whole dossier to Thailand around late Spring. The waiting part is hard knowing that it means more time lost between us and our daughter. However, God knows the best timing. Perhaps the waiting is best so that we can begin to learn more Thai. In fact, a Thai CSU student has offered to give us free Thai lessons. We, unfortunately, were unable to visit the Thai lady and her husband in Denver last Sunday, since Jay's cold was getting progressively worse. But, we did manage to stop at a Lao market and buy some items necessary for making the kind of sticky rice that Penny would be accustomed to eating in northeastern Thailand. The people living there are actually ehnically and culturally Lao, but use Thai at school. So, we might try to learn a few Lao words along with Thai.