Home Study Interviews are Completed!

Today was our last interview for our homestudy!  It was done very quickly by a wonderful lady who assisted in teaching our MAPP classes.  By Monday, she will email us a copy to proof read.  The Saturday after Thanksgiving we will give her all our additional paperwork and references, and we should have a completed home study by Christmas! 
It was so nice to read all the kind things our references wrote about us!  I'm so glad we chose who we did to write on our behalf!  Their sweet words meant a lot to us in this process.
We learned some more on what to expect when trying to be matched with a child.  Some was disheartening.  The fact that we have no parenting experience may make us lose out to other families.  All I can think is "Would you deny me a biological child because I have not yet parented?"  Of course not!  So I'm scared that this may be a mark against us, but I'm hoping that being from an adoptive family, having a professional knowledge of services available to special needs children, and all our other good qualities will win out!  We plan to submit pictures and other things along with our homestudy in hopes of standing out and helping the caseworkers put a faces to our names!

Mission Accomplished!

MAPP classes are officially over!  Our last class was Saturday.  We have our certificate of completion...

Being awarded our certificate

We had several families come and talk to us about fostering and adopting.  One family was adopting a teenager I was familiar with through my work.  I boo-hooed through her entire story.  I am so happy she has found a loving forever family!  And I was so proud of how far she has come since she was last in our office.  That is one spectacular girl who is going places in life!

I was somewhat discouraged by one of the families.  They set out to adopt and went a year without a match, despite sending out home studies to several states.  They are now fostering, and were turned down for an adoption of one foster child because the child was a different race than them.  Instead, the child was matched with a family of his own race.  Now, I suppose I understand this in theory.  But the fact that the child was already in their home should matter!  Long story short, I am having another episode of doubt with the process.  I am scared that it will not work out, and we will simply spend six to twelve months waiting for a child that isn't out there.  We are still going to do our home study (if they ever figure out who CAN do it).  Hopefully it gets done quickly so we can get this ball rolling!

I'm trying to stay positive, but I am thinking we better have a plan C and D ready in case this doesn't work.