Home Study Approved!

Alright!

Next step:  submitting the I-600A to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service.

Second meeting with the social worker

All went well this evening.  She gave us lots of good information as well.  That's one of the things we really appreciate this time around.  Dillon is all about educating parents in advance so they go into the process with their eyes open to what might happen down the road.  We have had to take, both of us, a six-hour pre-adoption online workshop that discussed adoption in general, and Honduras adoptions in particular.  Very informative.  Plus we have other courses that we are required to take and books to read too. Not that we had complaints with Mario's and Erik's adoptions with our other agency.  But we prefer the approach that Dillon has, and wish that we had some of this information a few years ago.

Next step:  our social worker writes up her report, we review it, and it is finalized.

Home Study underway

We met with our social worker this evening for the first of two meetings.  Really cool lady -- Mario and Erik started playing with her right away and putting on shows for her!  She's the mother of three boys, so she got them.  She talked to Jerry and I both for a while, then I put the boys to bed, and she continued the discussion with Jerry.

She'll meet with us again in a couple weeks for a longer talk with me.  Probably the boys will want to dominate the discussion. Again!

Dillon approved Application Part 2!

A great feeling!  We know it is a long road, but we are one step closer!

Next stage:  home study.

Mario and Erik say "Yay!!!!"

Up until this point, Jerry and I had kept the third adoption under wraps. Not that we were excited about our news.  Of course we were!  But we wanted our boys to be the first ones in on the news, since they would be the ones most affected by it.  Here's the thing to keep in mind about adoptions in Honduras:  they take a long long long time.  We weren't sure how much the boys would understand about waiting potentially two years or more for there to be an addition to the family.  Then, we remembered that the home study process would require references.  So, we would have to start telling people soon, starting with our little kiddoes.

Their reaction:  "Yippee!!"  They literally started jumping up and down, and their smiles couldn't have been any bigger.  They started running around the house, dancing, shouting -- it was awesome!

Why in the world did we wait to tell them?!

Even cuter:  hearing them spread the news to other family members and friends.  Slightly shyly but with a big smile, they will approach someone and say, "We're adopting again!"  It is just the sweetest thing imaginable!

Application Part 2 is in the mail

Whew!  It feels good to get that done!  To give you an idea:  the completed Application Part 1 was about 1/8" thick, whereas the completed Part 2 was 1/2" thick!  We started on it right away, writing more essays, collecting copies of our birth certificates, our marriage license, tax forms, getting fingerprinted, getting poked and prodded by our doctors, all those fun things.