Today our social worker emailed and said she sent our rough draft of the home study to our family coordinator at AWAA to read over. That will probably take around a week to get the changes back from her but we're on the road to having that done! Can't wait to apply with USCIS so that hurdle is out of our way too! I'll keep you posted!! I also mailed my Louisiana birth certificate off to get certified today. Once I get the notarized copy of our home study I'll mail all of our Texas documents off for certification. I SO hope we can be DTC some time this summer. Today is 2 months and 4 days since we applied with AWAA. Last time it took me 10 months to be DTC!! 10 months!!! Sure hope its not that long this time!

Whats in a name?

I wanted to do a quick post about the name we've chosen for our new son! Actually, Brian came up with the name. We've decided to name him Rhett. We knew that after naming our oldest son Ridgedon that we couldn't just pick a common name for our other son. We wanted it to be just as strong sounding. So we were driving down the road one day throwing out some names and Brian said "What about Rhett?". Well, I liked it. Alot. But wanted to know what it meant before agreeing to it. When I got home I googled it and found that Rhett means ardent or fiery. And since I wasn't sure what ardent meant I looked it up. And this is where I fell in love with the name....

Ardent-adjective

1. having, expressive of, or characterized by intense feeling; passionate; fervent: an ardent vow; ardent love

2. intensely devoted, eager, or enthusiastic; zealous

I look forward to meeting our Rhett!! I pray he is passionate in his love of the Lord. I know we are already longing for and eager to meet this child the Lord has chosen for our family!! My heart is anxious for him already.......

Last home study complete!!!

Last night we completed our 3rd and final home study(hopefully!). It is such a relief to know that we have that hurdle behind us. We have several more in front of us but at least we can check this off. Now we wait. Probably quite a while. And when we receive our final copy of the home study we can send it off to USCIS for approval from them. Yeah! I'm so excited!!

Second home study visit...

Tonight was our second visit with our social worker for the home study. We met at the Starbucks in Brian's hospital where he is on call tonight. Not painful at all. We just talked about our marriage and parenting things. No biggie! Thursday is our last one! Whoot whoot!!

First home study visit

Today was our very first home study visit for this adoption. We have the same social worker as we did for Adiah so it is really nice to already have a relationship established with her. We did the house visit today and she visited with the kids about how they felt about adopting again, etc. Since we've already done this before we all kind of knew what to expect. But still!! Its still a little exciting!! I'm just thrilled to get this going so we can get our documents over to China as quick as possible. We will have our next visit tomorrow evening with just Brian and I. And then I think our 3rd and final one will be Thursday. And then we wait for our report to be written up which will probably take a few weeks. I'm excited!!! I'm getting very close to being finished gathering all of our dossier items as well. Besides the home study and USCIS clearance I have to get our police clearance. Once I get those things then I get to begin the certification and authentication process!! Good times!!

Home study documents!!

Today we finished the last of the physicals for the home study! We also all got our TB tests done and will have those read on Thursday. So we are officially finished gathering our documents for our home study!!! Yee haw!!! We have our first visit with our social worker on Saturday and our second visit possibly on Sunday evening. Praise God that we are moving along nicely so far!! And I do believe we have a name for our new little one....but I won't say it here until we are for sure!!

Family Coordinator Day

I feel like we are getting so close to having all of our home study documents gathered! Dude! When you've done this before its like you don't want to waste time! Last time we decided to paper chase it took us 10 months before we were DTC. I sure hope I don't' regret saying this but I don't think it will take near as long this time. I realize all I've done so far depended on me. When I'm waiting on other people to do their job it might be a different story. I sure would like to be DTC this time by the end of the summer. We'll see, huh? Today our new family coordinator called to introduce herself. Her name is Melissa. She seemed super nice! She sent me all of the things we need to be working on for our dossier and it reminded me again how much it takes to do this paperwork. The precision! But I lay in bed at night and think about this journey we're on again. I'm still in awe! Thank you, Lord, that you have called Brian and I to walk this road again. I'm so thankful for my kids. They are all desired and wanted! And this new life that you will bring into our family....well, he's already loved and talked about so much. We can't wait to see how this all comes together and who it is that you have ordained to be a part of the Woods Gang!! Hold him and protect him until he can be with his forever family. Thank you that you knit us together so perfectly with such a plan for our lives!!