Our home study is completed. It was done earlier this week but we've been so busy that I haven't had a chance to post the good news. Our HS Agency, Nathanson Adoption Services, was fantastic! And our SW, Kit, was extremely professional, caring, and an absolute pleasure to work with.
All of our out of state documents have been certified. We're waiting on our I-171H to be completed. Then we'll take all of our NC documents and get them certified. When they come back we'll send everything off to be authenticated. That's about all there is left. Once it all comes back from being authenticated we send the entire dossier to CCAI. They'll have several people look everything over for verification. Then the dossier is sent to China!
There's a light at the end of this tunnel they call the paper chase...
Tomorrow morning we have our final meeting for our home study. We should have been done a long time ago but my medical records slowed us down. I hurt my back a few weeks before my physical and so the doctor had me on some med's. Then I had the flu. So when I got my blood work done, my blood count was off. My doctor said it was probably the medicine and scheduled another appointment several weeks later. And all of this was on top of the fact that we had to wait a month and a half just to get our physicals. I'm happy to say that my blood work turned out great, I no longer have the flu, and after 3 weeks of physical therapy my back is doing much better!
On a side note... I'm interested in finding more personal adoption sites (stories, blogs, etc...). If you know of any, please leave a comment or shoot me an email.
We had our first Home Study visit last night. Everything went well. Our social worker is a pleasure to work with. We meet with her again on Friday.
One step closer!
We sent in our application to Nathanson Adoption Services yesterday.
After talking with them I felt that they covered a few of my biggest concerns. First, they are experienced with China adoptions. Second, they have worked with CCAI before. And finally, they have an expedite option where you can pay a little more to get the Home Study completed in a shorter amount of time.
I talked with a few people who had used them for their Home Study and everyone had great things to say about them.
We're still reviewing different organizations who provide home studies. If anyone in NC has any recommendations, please let me know.