Signed, Sealed Deliver .....

Last week we got SOO much done in our adoption journey!! I feel like we actually may have gotten a head start and am loving the feeling! We got the "new" child/baby room set up. We ended up just keeping all of Ryder's old decorations and put his bed back in there so it looks just like Ryder's baby nursery. It was just alot easier doing it this way, because they need to see a room "set-up" and with me being such a decorator I couldn't come up with ANYTHING "neutral" to do in there. So this will help us pass the room inspection because it's complete, and also let me re-do the room when we get placed with a child. It's soo hard not knowing if its a boy or girl or age. I don't know how people do it! Here is the list of things we accomplished this week

-Eric and I got our physicals to include: TB tests, Cholesterol, and all of the medical paperwork and both of us PASSED with flying colors!! :) I was a little concerned about the whole cancer past in mine, but she said that I am doing so well now that it wasn't an issue!!!

-Ryder got his physical, and all the paperwork needed (His was just a one page summary needed to be filled out, no shots or anything!)

-I applied for my Social Security card (I never got a new one when Eric and I were married with my new last name and on top of that I had NO idea where my old one was) they told me it would take 3 weeks to come in, but low and behold Friday when I was getting ready to send in what we had so far it came in the mail!! Another God thing! (by the way this process took an hour at the downtown federal building! not something I enjoyed AT ALL!)

-Eric and I went downtown and had all of our fingerprints taken

-Eric applied for a new birth certificate, another thing we didn't have

-Completed BOTH rooms, Ryder's new room and the child's "inspection" room

-Filling out paperwork, organizing everything, printing off our "photo book" that will be given to our child to show them their "Forever family! :) " and getting all of that copied and in the mail... my brother went with me one night to help while my mom kept Ryder and it took us OVER AND HOUR to copy everything and print things off! I am SOO glad this paperwork process is almost over!!

So what do we have left??

-2- 7 hour training sessions this coming weekend and the following
-financial paperwork
-discipline agreement
-autobiography's for each of us
-home study
-child factor checklist
-child openness form
-Evacuation route plan
-DHEC inspection
-Fire inspection
-Make sure all of our references turned their paperwork in... so hint hint get moving!! We had to choose 4 references of friends (NOT FAMILY) that we have known for at least 3 years
and I think that's it! I don't have the paper in front of me so I might be missing something but it doesn't seem like THAT much! They told us at our meeting that DHEC is running 3 months behind so to expect this to take 6 months for the entire process. I am still keeping my fingers crossed that we will be done around 4 months... and then we just wait, until they place a child with us!! Are you getting excited?? I am!!!! :)