Inspection and Interviews

We had our case worker, Wayne, from LDS Family Services come and inspect our house and give us individual interviews on Friday. He was very impressed about how fast we got to this point. People usually take 3-6 months with phases 1-3 and we did them in about 6 weeks.
He came over and immediately was impressed about how well we keep up our home and how well we got things "baby-proofed". He really liked the fence around our pool, that was a great load off our mind.
After the inspection we had personal interviews. They were a piece of cake compared to all the time it took working and waiting to see if our house was up to what they wanted. The personal interview was mainly to see how we individually felt about adopting and if we had issues in our past that would give them any reason to not have a child placed with us. When we finished the interviews, Wayne said that we passed the home inspection and interviews!
Now all that is left is to wait on the FBI to finish the background check on us. When that is done Wayne and an adoption committee will get together and look at our paperwork and then discuss if we are good adoptive parent material. He said that all of that should take about two weeks to a month, depending on when the FBI background check is finished. When all that is done we should be on the itsaboutlove.org website! Also we will be in the books that the birthmothers can look through in Sacramento's LDS Family Services office. Yay!!!
Now the waiting begins...

The Next Step

We have finished phase 3 of 5 and are now waiting to have a home inspection and personal interviews. Those are scheduled for Friday the 30th!
We have been baby proofing the house since our case worker told us the things we needed to do, since September. We have plugs on outlets, a door knob cover for the garage door and a fence around the pool, to name a few things. All we still need to do before the inspection is put baby proof locks in some drawers and a few cabinets.
After we are approved our profile will be put on itsaboutlove.org. Then the birth mothers can see us there and decide if we are the ones for their child.
I can't believe how quickly this all has come together since we finally decided to pursue adoption. I can't wait til we are able to hold our child in our arms and start the next chapter of our lives together!

Papers

We are done with the 2nd of the 5 phases in the adoption process today! All we had left to do was a water safety class then we could send in all of the documents that they wanted us to fill out. We had the class at 11AM . Once we got back from class we put all of the paper work together and ran over to the post office to mail it in. The only snag was that the post office was closed! We eventually remembered that the UPS Store was open and could mail our packet of papers. Yay they are on their way!
Phase 2 was the toughest one so far. We had to answer questions online, we had to fill out documents and we had to do first aid, CPR and water safety classes. It was tough but obviously worth it!
Now on to phase 3! (and we are almost done with that one too!)

A New Fence

One of the things that we were always going to have someday was a fence around our pool. We always thought that we would put one in once I got pregnant. Since that didn't happen it just never got done. But when LDS Family Services said we needed one before we could even think about adopting, we decided that we should finally put one in. :-) So Joel and I came up with a fence design, and Joel bought the fence parts online.

When it was delivered we found that it was all in pieces. We had to assemble the the fence bar by bar. It didn't take long once we figured out that we should use the drill to screw in the pieces!

On Saturday my dad came to help Joel put in the fence. They had that fence up in about 4 hours! I was so excited! I secretly thought that that a fence around our patio would make me feel claustrophobic, but it didn't! It is just perfect. I just love looking out the window and seeing it there. They did a great job putting it in. Thanks Dad for helping us!