Home Study #1

We had our first home study tonight. I didn't get myself all worked up about it either. Our house is insanely clean, primarily because the kids aren't here! :) We worked some over the weekend and this afternoon getting the house presentable. The house is at least clean now until Thursday night, when the kids come home of course!

There were a lot of papers to sign and some forms to go over. We have a ton of paperwork to fill out before the training starts. The biggest hurdle we will have to overcome is our marriage certificate, seeing as how we don't actually have one. We're not legally married. Just kidding! When we were robbed shortly after we got married, we lost everything, including a safety deposit box that had passports, birth certificates, and our marriage certificate. When I checked a few years ago into replacing it, I found out we would actually have to both be at city hall in Martinsville, IN to get a copy of our marriage certificate. It sure would be nice if things have changed and I could just order it online! But, if driving to Indiana to get our marriage license allows us to be foster parents, we will do it! DAY TRIP!

Beyond that, we need to purchase a 5 lb. fire extinguisher, have a fire escape plan, purchase outlet covers, and tighten the railing on the basement stairs and our house will completely 'pass'. It was a lot less invasive (so far) than we had anticipated. We do have to get fingerprinted for the State and for the FBI. Fill out paperwork for background checks. Standard paperwork, that neither one of us are worried about. We don't have any criminal history or anything like that. All in all the prep work I think will cost us about $50 (not counting the household safety items we need to purchase). Not bad.

More updates as they come. It feels good having the first 'big' step out of the way. Thanks for the prayers. Keep them coming!

Here we go!

Well things are finally starting to move with foster parenting. I just got off the phone and we have our initial home study scheduled for 6pm on July 27th! At that time, the case worker will drop off all the paperwork we need to complete in order to start the training in September. I'm a little nervous but mostly excited. It's hard to be patient, but as this process requires patience, I am learning. Please keep us in prayer as the date approaches and on that day as well. I will definitely post how everything went!

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." - James 1:27

Waiting...

I know I haven't updated this for a while. The primary reason is that there is nothing really new to say. We're still just waiting until September rolls around and we begin the training. I did get a follow up call from the initial meeting; they wanted to make sure we were still interested and schedule our home study. Once I told her we wanted to wait until the training class in September she said she would call me back closer to that time. So we're still on board with this. Kris and I have talked over a lot of details and are trying to decide what is best with our current house, as far as providing a room for another child. We really have plenty of space here (with the exception of NOT having a second bathroom). Kaleb is in a big room by himself, and Livvy is in a much smaller room by herself. Katherine and Abbey are sharing a large room and then Kris and I have our own room as well. So there is no doubt that we will have room enough; we are just trying to figure out what arrangements work out best. If we had a boy come to us, he could easily go in Kaleb's room. If it were a girl, we could put Kaleb and Livvy together, unless there are some sort of local regulations against that. It isn't ideal (why wasn't she a boy??) :-) but it will work and then the small room would be available for our foster child. In a few years we hope to be able to save enough money to move from this location, but we're happy to know that our house would be large enough for at least one more little person.