And change is good, right?

Okay, so we changed back. Our agency will be AAI in Washington. WIAA will do the homestudy. We just weren't comfortable being restricted to SN adoption when there could be a chance that NSN would work out for us.

So, back we went. Luckily, we hadn't started the homestudy yet.

Today I started filling out all the paperwork for both the adoption agency and the homestudy agency, so we can get started officially. That means coming up with $1700 for WIAA to do the homestudy for 1200, and the post placement report deposit of 500.

We will send in our application fee to AAI in about a week. No hurry, we really want to take it easy, because once it gets going, it will be a truly wild ride.

That is, of course, if we are approved at all. We have some challenges. First, we have a hit on our abuse clearances, due to my daughter who is now 27, back when she was 13, filed a complaint against Tim claiming abuse. It wasn't true, and we were never charged, but, the investigation is still on our records, and always will be. The last time around, when we adopted Myleigh, it was checked, and dismissed as not valid, but, now that China is a Hague country, it will be more important that the HS social worker clears it thoroughly. The agency approving us has to be sure they are not getting themselves into a problem with China for future adoptions. so, I am really praying this won't stop us in our tracks.

Second, we have a failed homestudy from the last time we pursued this, back in 2006, a year after our son Nick passed away. We were not approved by the social worker from the homestudy agency we were using, a different one, due to Matthew being a slow reader, and due to the recentness of the loss of Nick. They suggested we apply in two years and that they would be happy to approve us, but, this time, we just don't trust them. They were extremely slow, took eight months to get around to telling us we weren't approved, and kept losing paperwork. It was a nightmare I don't want to repeat. Tom with WIAA took up our case back then, and after a long discussion with him about everything, he was ready to proceed forward, but, we decided that we wanted to postpone, mostly because it had been such a terrible eight months, and we weren't up for anymore disappointments. So, we postponed, and he said to call him when we were ready to move forward. When I contacted him this month, he said he still had all of our paperwork and was happy to work with us again.

And that brings us to today. Filling out applications, financial statements, and back to explaining the abuse hit all over again. I think we are ready to put our heads down and plod through it.