Home Study!!

As I pulled into the driveway after picking the children up from school today, I saw the FedEx truck. I literally starting chanting, "Please be for me, please be for me, please be for me!" and my children thought I was crazy! lol! The way he was going though, he would have already visited the house. When I got to the door, I tried not to be too excited, but immediately wanted to check the mailbox in the hope that they would not have required a signature. D had beaten me home for lunch and I heard him as soon as I got in the door, "Guess what came today?!" Talk about excitement!! Though, the home study agency had told me that I needed a letter from the placing agency saying they had approved it before we could submit our I-800A, so I wasn't AS excited as I wanted to be because I knew we still had to wait for that. Still, I just HAD to open it and see the actual study for myself.... to my complete surprise, that other letter was included! The placing agency sent it to them instead of to me. SWEET!!! Now all we need is for D to add his signatures and then mail this beautiful STACK of an application to the USCIS! YAY!!!

I had already read a draft of the home study and informed them of a few errors I had found. The placing agency did the same, so I was confident that everything would be accurate and since I had already read through it once, there was no reason to do so again. Still, having it in my hands begged at least a cursory glance. While I skimmed about 3 pages, I found 3 errors. All relating to D. I'm trying to not panic. If those errors need to be corrected, that will likely set us back another 2-3 weeks and a decent amount of money for shipping it again. Though, I'm hoping that won't happen. The most frustrating thing is that 1 of the errors was one that I had pointed out after I read the draft and the other 2 were correct in the draft and somehow got changed. It isn't exactly MY fault! I am hoping and praying that they are minor enough that we can submit it as is! One of the errors is that they forgot to mention that D resided in Iowa, despite the child abuse report from Iowa and the fact that we lived together there and they mentioned it for me. I don't think that is very important, but what do I know. The other 2 mistakes are that they switched D's birth city and the city he grew up in. They are about an hour apart on a map, so not that drastic, right? The only problem I can see there is that it will not match his birth certificate, which we also have to include a copy of. :-(

I sent an email to 2 contacts at our home study agency to see whether it is ok to submit as is or whether they will have to correct these mistakes. Not only is God teaching me patience (and tolerance for other people not doing things the way I want them to) but I think He's got me in the advanced course!! *sigh*