Where do I begin...

This past week has truly been a crazy one for us in the Leonard household. With a trip to PA to visit Grandma and a few other surprises...life is never dull around here!

The girls and I had a wonderful time in PA while visiting Grandma! The girls were so very sad when we left yesterday. Francesca cried for the first 45 minutes of our ride and repeatedly questioned me on why Mommy, Daddy, and Grandma can't live together. It was super hard on my mom as well for after spending almost a whole week with the girls - she did not want to see us go.

While we were in PA, I did have a visit with our social worker. As some of you know, our social worker submitted an unapproved homes study to our agency for review back on July 23rd, which was returned unrevised because it was not Hague related. Back on August 7th, our social worker sent in another unapproved home study for review and this time it was Hague related. It took our agency almost 1 week for them to review it and get back to our social worker with the corrections that needed to be made (which now makes it August 14th). So last week, I meet with or social worker to make those corrections and get the now corrected, once reviewed - waiting for approval - home study sent back into our agency for another review. I am so hoping that we hear that all is well and that this home study was finally approved so we can move forward with sending in our I800A.

Since the home study has been taking us a lot longer than originally "told". Our agency advised us that we start the certification & authentication process of the documents we already gather for our dossier. Birth certificates, marriage licence, financial report, employment letters, state police clearances, adoption petition, and doctor reports were dropped off today at the Fed Ex box for delivery. Even though we are still waiting on our approved home study, I am feeling like we are moving forward with what we can do.

OK - now here is some news on our Benjamin. I have been in contact with some volunteers that are currently at his orphanage. So far, they have not been able to locate him. They are thinking he has been placed with a foster family but so far no one has gotten any information. To ask the question, am I a little worried about not being able to find out anything on our little guy - you bet, but I am not stressing over it. When I last spoke to our agency's waiting child department two weeks ago, I was told that a request for an update was placed (along with a request for some updated photos). Now, only time will tell on whether we will get anything. According to our agency, any thing is possible - and we might not get anything at all....sigh

Since this post is getting way too long, I'll start wrapping it up here. One last thing to post - while we were in PA, the girls got their hairs cut...short! I think they look adorable and here are a few photos just to prove that I am so right! Love those girls of mine!