August

Last week Jeff and I finished our second and final Home Study interview. We still have a little ways to go before the Home Study is completed, though. We have to complete 10 hours of adoption education, pay a visit to a notary, and then send all the completed paperwork in to our caseworker. ( We should be done by mid September) Then we will just be waiting on the state of Illinois to grant us a license to adopt. After the state's approval, we send everything in to US Immigration, where we will wait to be approved for international adoption. And then, we will once again send everything in, this time to the Haitian government, to be approved to adopt from Haiti. So for the next several months we'll spend a lot of time waiting. :)

Last week we also celebrated Ryder's 6th birthday. For his party we had a picnic and did some hiking at Matthessien State Park (same place where we took the sunflower pics) . We had a great time and the kids loved stomping in the puddles and climbing through the caves.