Home Study part one

Our first home study was yesterday and it went great. We met the social worker that would be writing our home study report for us. This is basically a report that will cover our family in detail. This will be what the county social workers read about us when they are deciding who they are going to place kids with. Basically it's our advertising... we want our family to stand out, be different, something unique that will help those county social workers remember us. Something that will bring us to their mind when they get kids that need a great family.

This whole report will be based on three different visits. This visit we answered a lot of questions that would help this social worker get a feel for who we are. We also went over what kinds of kids we were willing to take into our home. Kids with ADD, FAS, Born addicted to drugs, Autism... kids who are blind, deaf, handicapped etc, or what about kids that were neglected, physically abused or sexually abused? We had just as many questions for our social worker as she did for us. We talked through a lot of these "scenarios" and decided what would work with our family and what we didn't think we could handle... for now anyway.

We also filled out questioners about ourselves and our spouses. Things about drug and alcohol use, our extended families, our childhood etc. The social worker will use our answers to come up with topics that need to be discussed during our personal interviews. These questions were so broad. One was, "have you ever used illegal drugs?" Immediately I think no, of course not. Then I remember that my freshman year of highschool I had smoked Marijuana (yes, believe or not I wasn't perfect). I asked the social worker if that counted.. she said yes. So I'm sure that will be a topic of conversation in our interview. That's okay though because that's about as exciting as it got for our questionnaires.

Brian and I felt so blessed that we were able to mark "no, never or N/A" to the majority of the questions. It was yet another reminder of how good we have it and it all started with our childhoods. Our parents loved God, loved us and loved eachother (and still do). They taught us to make good choices, and though I ignored some of those teachings (smoking marijuana in hs would be one of them) I ultimately had a good head on my shoulders. Most importantly they taught us about God and guided us in finding our own relationship with Jesus Christ and for that we are blessed.

The next step will be our personal interviews on December 6th. After that we will have at least one more. The social worker said that for some reason things tend to slow down for them during the holiday season. Maybe the county knows the private organizations tend to be closed? Maybe the overall feelings that the "holiday season" brings help families to keep it together? Or maybe people are just to busy to notice things aren't going good? Whatever the reason, it is what it is. She predicts we will probably have a placement around January or February. This whole process is taking a little longer than we thought it would, but we are in no hurry. We believe in GODS timing and know that he has a plan for us and for the child that will be coming into our family.

Andersen's first birthday!

Happy first birthday Andersen David. We love you more than you know!

Seriously this was only a year ago?!?! They change so much the first year.

Last weekend we celebrated Andersen's Birthday with a superhero party. We had a blast celebrating our little guy with our loved ones. (Remember you can click on the collages so you can see the smaller pics better.)

We are so thankful that God gave us this precious little guy. I can't wait to watch him grow... but I do wish time would slow down just a bit because it's already going by way too fast!
Listen this to this song if you haven't heard it yet, all parents can relate I'm sure. (you may need to turn off the play list on the bottom of the page before you start this song)