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| Closet Catastrophe. This is Sam's side of the closet. I watched in horror as the whole thing came falling down on me. See the row of holes in the wall? That's where the rack should be. See the stellar patch job next to the middle arm from the previous homeowners? Their solution: wadded-up paper towel with wall putty over it. Paper mâché is the new fad in home repair. |
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| Fixing the previous homeowners' patch job correctly. We had to cut out the drywall to the studs and patch in new pieces of drywall. |
The day of the home study arrived and I expected the worse - a humorless lady with a severe bun, high collar, horn-rimmed glasses, armed with white gloves and a clipboard. I was upstairs when Stephanie (our social worker) arrived to find Sam vacuuming boxelder bugs off our front door. Great, check one. We're infested with bugs. But to my relief, I heard laughter greet me as I came down the stairs. This was not the prim and proper lady I envisioned. Much to my delight, Stephanie was a normal, easy-going woman, wanting to help us pass our home study.
To be honest, it was far less painful than I let my mind imagine it would be. The whole meeting took only an hour and a half. We signed a lot of papers, received a lot of papers for reading, and still need to fill out and return a lot of papers. She then took about a 5-minute tour of our house. She didn't even go in the basement, and we spent a lot of time cleaning and organizing it! The reason being, it's not technically a "living area" since it's an unfinished basement. She also answered any questions we had. I know in the past post I mentioned that one agency stated its first meetings typically took 4-5 hours, with subsequent meetings afterwards. I've learned that every agency has its own approach for conducting home studies. Thankfully, we went with one that was a little less taxing during the first meeting, and also recommended by our placing agency.
I've also learned that I was a little off on the cost of a home study, at least where one is not conducted by the placing agency. (The placing agency is the agency that will coordinate with the adoption country and the adopting parents to place a child.) Originally, I thought that a home study was around $1500. Well, that's true if our placing agency, CHI, was conducting the study. However, since CHI is located in St. Louis, MO, we have to have an Illinois agency do our home study...at the cost of $3900. And the reason for the difference in cost is that the agency conducting the home study has to go through a lot more work to make sure our home study meets the standards of our adopting country and our placing agency's requirements.
Our next two meetings will be me and Sam individually. Stephanie said we can duke it out as to who can go first. Sam's already told me that he'll go first, and then not tell me anything she's asked, just to drive me crazy. I'm looking forward to the months ahead as we complete our home study. It just means that we are making progress on the very long road ahead of us. I continually thank God for all the love and support from all of our family and friends. You are all wonderful and we're blessed to have you in our lives.
Sam and I are always happy to discuss our process thus far and if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask. If you're interested in helping in our fund-raising efforts, you can visit www.gofundme.com/schmitzfamily. Thank you again for all of your support!
