Monday, February 22, 2010

The Home Study ... oh, boy.

Since we live several states away from our adoption agency, we chose to have our home study done by an agency closer to where we live.  It seemed like an easy way to accomplish this part of the process, but it is turning out to be more complicated than we expected.

We haven't even actually begun our home study yet - we've just been talking to different agencies about their process (and learning that everything costs more than expected).  For instance, we didn't realize that in order to have another agency do the home study, we have to fill out an application with that agency and pay their application fee as if we were applying to adopt through them.  That's an extra $250-$300 on top of the stated home study fee.  Also, even though our agency gives a refund for the post placement study fees if they are turned in on time, we still have to pay the other agency those fees, so there won't actually be a refund.  It will likely turn out to cost us closer to $3,000 rather than the $1,600 or so we first anticipated. (But we do know that even though we are surprised by this, God is not.)

We met with an agency located nearby on February 12th, but for various reasons we're not sure we're going to use them for the home study.  So now we're looking into a couple of others. We're feeling pretty frustrated right now because it seems as if we are just spinning our wheels until we settle this matter and get the home study process going. 

We are so excited about what God is doing and will do in our family through the adoption process.  We know that our lives and the lives of ALL of our children will be changed forever.  So, whatever we have to do, we'll do....

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