first home study meeting

we had our first home study meeting with august on december fifteenth.

she came at dinner time and just as chris was coming home from work. we ate a yummy turkey pot pie and we had a lovely dinner together just like friends. it was pretty cool. sophia was being extra cute and well behaved (i swear i didnt bribe her). if you catch sophia on a good night its like magic if you catch her on a bad night good lord look out. lucky for us she was great and was even singing christmas songs and cracking jokes. good job sophia and thank you for not being a spazzomatic grumpy child.

after dinner sophia got to go hang out with grama linda and they went to a bethlehem walk at a nearby school. so awesome and right up her alley. i wished i could have gone. the students from the school reenact the christmas story. if you know sophia you know she loves the christmas story and loves to be mary.

anyways back to the meeting.

the night before chris and i filled out an 11 page questionnaire . we each filled in our own separately. it was a questionnaire that asked you to check the boxes that best describe such and such. it was mostly questions about our childhood, our parents, what we were like as children and teenagers, what our relationship is like, what are our partners personalities like, what are the roles/dynamics in our family, what are our parenting styles etc... a basic understanding of where we are coming from. i have to say that it was really fun to compare our questionnaires afterwards. so that is what you think of me chris?? i kept laughing because even the way we filled out our questionnaire was so different from each other. mine had many many boxes checked and chris had just one or two per question. he is to the point and i like to go on and on. it was a fun way to learn more about each other.

the meeting was very comfortable. august would ask us questions very similar to what was on the questionnaire and we would give our answers. we were very open honest and real. i tried not to talk too much so that chris would have time to pipe in and say his views. it was hard for me but i think i managed.

we talked for a couple hours getting into our relationship, childhood and parenting style.

in the new year august will call me and set up a time for her to come and interview just me, then she will set up a time to interview just chris and then after that we will have another joint interview. to my knowledge that is the end of the home study process. so much faster than i was expecting. after we finish the interviews she will type everything up and we will get to review what she has written to confirm that everything is accurate, then she will have two or three different levels in the ministry review us. (is it bad that whenever the word ministry is used i immediately think of the ministry of magic from harry potter?) if we are approved and everything goes as planned we sign a written contract and we get placed on the waiting list to accept children. august estimated that we would be complete by early spring. awesome.

chris has a week off and we are going to try and rearrange our house so that we can have that finished and sophia used to the new set up before we bring in a child. we really want to keep this huge transition as easy as possible for her. since our home is so small we have to make it work the best we can. so our game plan is as follows. our bedroom becomes sophia's new room / toy area. sophia's room becomes the foster childs room. our tv room comes back up stairs and our current living room becomes our bedroom. it will be a lot of work. but we know this arrangement will make the most sense. i want to do this soon so that sophia has time to adjust to her new special room and not have it feel like the foster child is stealing her bedroom. we are going to make it as practical as possible although my esthetically pleasing side is going to have a hard time with that. function over beauty at this point. deep breaths laura. make it work is my motto. we will also need to purchase a toddler bed. we have a crib but we won't know the exact age of the children coming in. so an easily movable toddler bed is in need. we also will be getting a new organizing cube shelf for the insane amount of toys sophia has. i will be doing a huge organization of toys and grouping it in age appropriate bins. sophia is a fan of all things small. not the best when you will soon have a little toddler or baby in the house. the other big thing i will need to tackle (but not yet) is organizing all the girl clothes we have in bins randomly scattered in storage lockers and basements. sophia's cousin lola borrowed all of sophia's clothes so going through and finding the right sizes and weather appropriate clothes is going to be a big project.

also, i really want to say THANK YOU to all of you that wrote encouraging comments or who emailed me or facebook messaged me. you are all amazingly awesome and it really encouraged us. we are so lucky to have such great friends and family behind us!! the reason we have this love to give is because we have been *given* so much love in our life. so thank you to all of you who have given us that love!!

i will keep you posted as soon as we know more!