Pelley Family Blog

We have our first meeting with Julia, our social worker.  As it would happen, we are also babysitting for our pastor’s son, Cohen, on this day.  The meeting goes well - we seem to connect well with Julia.  She seems easy going. She has two adopted kids of her own.  Boy, did I forget how you don’t get anything done when a baby is around.  But it’s worth it - we have so much fun!  Joanna is quite the little mother!  Grace takes her turn helping as well.  Julia will meet with us twice more within a week - sounds okay to me. 

On our last meeting, I ask her when she’s going to ask all of these probing questions we’ve been expecting - to find out if we can handle this.  She says that through the (very thorough) application we filled out, and our reference letters, she gets a good view of our life and qualifications.  She also said that domestic adoptions really do require more intense questioning.  Partly because, for many of those adoptions, there is a stipend involved, and they need to make sure that the family is not in it for the money.  Imagine that! She said that most families willing to go through the process and pay out the money for an international adoption have pretty pure motives.

Oh - we also have our fingerprints taken at the immigration office this week!  We later find out that with the US adoption of the “Hague”, on April 1, the rules on international adoption, many of these processes, especially with immigration, change, and it takes a lot longer to work through the system.  Thank you Mike for sending in that application before April 1!!

For as easy as our home interviews were, getting the actual homestudy was a long process.  Very frustrating on our end.  Then, as we neared completion, we found out that our homestudy agency was closing their Cleveland office.   Lots of frustration!