Home Study - Home Visit

Well, a week (this was written a few weeks ago) has past since our SW (social worker) came over to inspect our house and meet the rest of our family.  We cleaned the house and because Travis was helping it turned into more of a spring cleaning then a regular, clean everything up, vacuum and dust event.  That is fine by me because he is a very efficient closet organizer and so lots of things that were on my to do list got done!  Yipee!  Just before she was to arrive we found that behind the boys closed door their room was very far from presentable and so we lunched into a bit of a scramble mode to get that done and our nerves were a bit fried by this point and we were all a bit crusty.  So we gathered in the living room to pray and ask the Lord to forgive us for our frantic behavior and we felt so much peace after this.  We knew that our friends were praying and it is amazing what  just knowing that does for calming us.  This felt like a huge event for us.  It seemed as if 2 of our family members were counting on us and we bore the weight of responsibility.

She arrived and all the littles were waiting at the dining room window and whispers of "she is TALL!" "Is that her?"  "Is she nice?"  We invited her in and she greeted them all and her first question was "so what did you do all day today?"  Nice.  So the kids piped up with "we were cleaning the house all day."  "Oh" she said, "did you clean the house for me?"  "yup" rang the kids.  They were excited and nervous all at the same time.

So we all sat down in the living room and I think she got a kick out of all 5 kids choosing to sit on the love seat together.  She asked "do you think there is room for 2 more on that couch?"  All five nodded their heads!  She proceeded to question them for 1 1/2 hours.  It was interesting for us to see how they do under pressure.  She is after all a child therapist, so she knew when to lighten up the questions and that was helpful. Thankfully there were some refreshing times of laughter through out.  How can there not be with 5 kids under 12 answering a professional's questions.  When asked to describe their Dad in 5 words, Chalise says "he's famous."  Coden says "he likes Case IH." It was hard for Travis and me to come up with character words for our parents so we completely expected that this would not yield the results she was hoping for.  She also asked them questions about how it might feel to have 2 new kids trying to monopolize all their parents time.  We have done a lot of talking about these things with them but it was good to have her talk through some of the hard stuff that might happen with children raised in an orphanage.
Then everyone took her on a house tour and we thought she would be looking for specific things but she didn't say anything about it so I guess all is well.  We did add a few smoke alarms and a fire extinguisher just in case but I don't know if she even took note of them.  They are required if you are adopting domestically but the rules for international adoption is not as strict.  Does that make sense?
I was glad that the part with the kids was done.  Us adults sat in the living room for another hour of questions regarding finances, health and other technical things.
Whoo hoo!  The home visit is done and we only have 1 more meeting with our SW.  Since she has a lot of experience working with children who have not made attachments in their early childhood we have been able to glean valuable advice for when we add our new children to the family.
Once our last meeting is complete we start doing stacks of paper work.