We've started the paper-chase for our home study and dossier! The home study coordinator wants us to gather all of our home study documents and mail them to him before he will schedule our 4 home visits. So it will probably be mid-October before we even meet our social worker. There seems to be a little more required this time for the home study (such as a vet exam and vaccinations for our cats), but so far it doesn't seem to be too difficult to get together. Many of the documents needed for our home study will also be used for our dossier. And I found out some GREAT news! This time we only have to get 2 documents certified at the county and state level for our dossier. Certifying everything is what seemed to be the most time consuming and annoying last time. We also found out that we can use the criminal background check that we need for our home study for our dossier. Last time our home study provider couldn't request more than one copy and we were required to get fingerprinted a second time and pay a separate fee. So maybe the paper-chase won't be too bad this time! It also helps that we put the Adoption Tax Credit and the First-time Home Buyer Tax Credit directly into our savings for this purpose. So we have the money we need to at least submit our dossier, and then we will have time before we need to make any more payments.

I think I am also less stressed about the process this time because I am not aching for this child to join our family YESTERDAY like I was with Jonas. This time I have 2 wonderful kids to keep me busy. Here are some pictures of one our recent adventures; a treasure hunt!

Notice that Jonas is wearing his winter boots. He found them that day and literally wore them ALL day. He even asked me if he could wear them during his nap (stinky feet!), which I allowed. He was quite upset when I did not allow him to wear them during his bath that evening or to bed that night.

Jonas decided that they needed to dig for treasure too.

Treasure hunting is hard work, so we had to stop for a juice break at Grandma and Grandpa's

Then we made a Treasure chest

And filled it with treasures!

Just don't tell Jonas that I had to throw the treasure and treasure chest away today. I noticed some little white wormy things crawling around inside the box (maggots???!!!).