By His Grace

We have our first home study visit next Tuesday and I could not feel more joy in my heart.

Okay, so I've been slacking on the blog but it's because I've been busy. We decided not to go with the agency (BCS). We really liked their orientation and thought they did a great job but ever since the orientation I have heard from more people (whether it's people who have adopted children, people who are looking to adopt children, caseworkers from outside home study agencies, etc.) say they would not recommend them. One of the reasons we liked them is because they are very reputable and they are the largest adoption agency in the country. That is also part of the problem...being so large, it can take many years to be matched with a baby/birth mom through them because of how many clients they have. They say the average wait time is 9-12 months but realistically I have heard of more people waiting 1.5 years to 4 years. Also, I've been told by several professional people in the business to really drill BCS about their prices. The price we believe we will pay with them is great and all (well, great as far as adoption agencies go) but I have heard from outside sources that that is where clients get really tripped up...because there ends up being way more fees and those fees are almost "hidden" with how they are presented to the clients. So, for the past couple of weeks I haven't been feeling great about Bethany even though we had all of the paperwork filled out for an independent home study. For the past week I've been communicating via email with a lady who works at a place that strictly does home studies. When I told her that we would not be using her company and using someone else (when I thought we were still going with BCS), she said she understood and that as a parent of an adopted son (and next year she plans to adopt again), she wanted to help me research places when I told her I had hesitations about BCS. She researched a few places for me keeping my budget in mind and recommended a consultant. What's really funny/ironic is that this consultant she recommended has been recommended to me by three different people within the past 2 weeks. I was going to stay away from consultants because they tend to be more expensive (because you get a baby way faster) but this particular consultant is the same price as an agency. I've also been told that she works well with reasonable budgets. I emailed the person at the consultant place and even called her but she has not called me back yet. From my understanding, she's been busy with four (which is a good thing!). I need to quit rambling on...

This week we decided to not use BCS and go with the home study agency where the lady has been helping me research places and giving me advice. To me this says a lot about what kind of person she is and what kind of people work at this place. She said she doesn't mind helping out adoptive parents because she is one herself and knows how it is. Anyways, I mailed off our home study application/fee yesterday at 4 p.m. Today, arond 11:40 a.m. I received a call from her (she is so sweet!) and she was very surprised but happy to get our application. We talked for a while and we have our first home study visit next Tuesday! She will be coming to our house to do the visit which will include an inspection and an interview and the visit will last around an hour. I asked her if we could come out to her office for the other two visits since it would be easier on her and she said that would be great but that she didn't mind coming to our house, either. We decided in the end that Kyle and I would come to her office for the last two visits (the home study is three visits total). I am so excited! We are still networking and we are going to be sending our adoption profile book (it looks so good!)

::::The adoption consultant just called me so I will update more later!!