Tuesday, May 18 Multi-State Clearances filled out

Guess what! Our worker says she has actually started our new home study! I don't know why that juicy bit of news makes me so happy. I think because the home study is like the backbone document for the whole process--without it there is no adoption, plain and simple. It must be completed prior to submitting to USCIS (the US Immigration folks) for pre-approval to bring Stephanie to the US and is the major document of the dossier, the stack of papers that will (hopefully) be gathered and sent to Bulgaria. Since we're adopting from a Hague country this time we have to get child abuse clearances for every state we've lived in. I'm not honestly sure if this is every state we've lived in since we were 18 or every state we've lived in for the last 18 years, excluding Idaho (Idaho's clearance will be taken care of when we get fingerprints at Health and Welfare in June) I was thinking the first choice. So today I filled out paperwork for 6 clearances--5 for me and 1 for Kevin. One of mine has to be notarized--hopefully in the morning--and then I'll hope to send the whole batch to our agency in Boise for further processing. Also found out today that we will need SIX personal references for this adoption.