1st Homestudy Visit

Whew!! Big sigh of relief. Our first home visit with the social worker went well. Julie Dalen is our homestudy social worker and it is her job to do all of our various background checks(which have already come back clear), references, birth and marriage certificates, Immigration and on and on. She also writes up a description of us for CCAI basically verifying that we are fairly normal stable people capable of raising a child.
We were quite relieved to discover that we are right where we are supposed to be with getting things done, as far as paperwork goes. She is very relaxed and encouraging about the whole process which relaxes and encourages us. We now have a rather short list of things to get done by our next visit with her which will be next Wednesday down in Madison. As far as trying to predict when we might be going to China - it all hinges on the INS(Immigration/Naturalization). Julie said that the Wisconsin office is one of the best in the country, and that they are very efficient and on top of national and international policy changes that have the biggest impact on how quickly things move. So we will have to wait and see. Once our INS paperwork is in we might have a better timeframe.
Now I actually feel like I can start enjoying this process. There is still a ton of paperwork to do, but that's o.k. My fear of the unknown about the homestudy has been relieved, now we can just move ahead. Yeah!