Hope

Today we received some hopeful news! Instead of having to do everything over again for the home study process, we might be able to skip the fingerprinting. In addition, the worker was able to complete her home study questions in 2 hours, and she will be able to use our other home study for almost everything! This saves us hours and hours of interviews and paperwork. Apparently she did not know that we had been chosen for specific children that were just waiting on the paperwork to get in order. I am so thankful! I am still hopeful we can have our children in our home by Thanksgiving, even though it might be a bit of a pipe dream. Anytime before the holidays would be great :) What a relief to know that we are all on the same page and things are looking up again! Thank you God for some blessings!

Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy is one of the vocabulary words in my classroom this week. That is very ironic. As I spend nearly every evening filling out paperwork that I have completed multiple times over the last 21 months, I understand bureaucracy. I feel frustrated because I don't know how to be my own advocate and say, "Hey! I have already done fingerprinting for the state and FBI, reference checks, and home inspections. And, by the way, I paid $400 for a home study in May, so why are you doing another one?" From what I have been told, we don't really need to do all this again, but when the lady in charge of my fate tells me to do it, I can either try to prove she is wrong or I can spend that time in quiet compliance, hoping someone else will tell her and save us from the pain of going through this process again. I wish I knew a way to PROVE that we don't need to do this all over, but I just don't.