social worker visits and other things

     Quick update about the social worker visits... we've had two so far. The first one was with the both of us. The social worker was super nice and very professional. She was here for almost two hours. Mostly she asked us the same things that were in our homestudy documents and autobiographical statements. She met the dogs, who were very well behaved (Buki did not even bark once!), and she did a quick tour of the house. The room that will eventually be the child's or children's is currently being used as a guest room/photo framing room/seed starting room, but that was fine. As far as asking about religion, she said, "You don't go to church, right?," we confirmed it, and she moved on.
     The second visit was with just me. Tabb sat out on the deck the whole time. She asked me more about my autobiography, and about our relationship. I think I babbled a bit, and I probably didn't need to go through our wedding album with her, but it was fine, too.
     Tabb has his one-on-one tomorrow while I'm in class.
     I also finally had a chance to slip out of work a few minutes early and go get fingerprinted at the courthouse. I mailed our fingerprints to the FBI today. This set is for our criminal background check. There will be a separately set of fingerprints for USCIS.
     We both have doctor's appointments next week for the medical paperwork. Tabb was lucky to find a friend of a friend in his building who is a notary and can come to the appointment with him. I found a traveling notary who coincidentally uses the same doctor's office as me, so she's giving me a cheap price to come out to my appointment.
     And finally we were excited to meet another local couple who has adopted a beautiful little girl from Ethiopia. Their daughter turned one on Sunday and we went to the party. The little girl was happy, healthy and clearly very attached to her parents. Hopefully a glimpse of our future!

preparing for the social worker visit

The last few weeks have been super busy with work, so it's good that the homestudy process has gone a little slowly. We now have been assigned a social worker, and we have our first visit on Tuesday. I'm taking a break right now from mopping the floors. I'm trying not to go overboard with the cleaning, but with this month being so busy, the house had gotten really dirty.
We had actually met this social worker before, briefly, when we went to an information session at the homestudy agency. She was giving an overview of all the different country programs. She seemed pretty laid back, so I'm feeling positive about Tuesday's visit. Buki is also doing really, really well - the dogs have been playing together every day. So we just need to buy a fire extinguisher and get the floors to be less crunchy, and we're good to go.