The Homestudy Exists

**Dictated by Jason**
The much anticipated homestudy arrived today. After several months of interviews, homework assignments, and providing personal details about our lives we now have a DRAFT to review. It is strange to read about yourself. The good news it that we are approved and recommended to continue in the process of adoption. Even Molly was characterized as being "friendly and energetic." There are still a few details to work out but soon the homestudy will be complete and we will begin the next step of the journey which is applying for VISAS and waiting for official approval of our homestudy.
**End Dictation of Jason**

** Start Nicole's version**
In other news we are working on fingerprints for the FBI to get clearance letters, a psychologist evaluation, and getting our most current taxes filed. I (Nicole) had the "pleasure" of calling the FBI today to try to get a simple answer to a simple question.

You can imagine how that turned out.

After the first 10 minutes of claiming to be an "individual" I called back and decided to try to push the 2 on my phone (for police agencies) to see what that did. I was immediately connected with a real person! (Don't worry, I confessed I was not a police agency but just desperate to get off the phone.)

So now we'll probably be collecting the rest of our documents for our Dossier and then will need to have everything apostiled by the Secretary of State in Illinois and Iowa. I'm thinking it should take about 4 more months... so probably it will take 6. :)

Hopefully things should get moving now that we have our homestudy draft completed. We'll need to have one last in home visit to take the water temperature and sign the homestudy and then we'll only need to update the study every time we move the couch. (Okay... not that often.. but it seems like it.)

I am so glad to see this milestone approaching! I thank God for giving us the patience and strength to get us this far and for keeping us hopeful and going! We're one step closer.