Thanksgiving Came & Went - No Homestudy

I was hoping to have my homestudy in my hot little hands by Thanksgiving, but it didn't happen. I called the homestudy agency and they kept giving me excuses. The social worker had the flu. Its almost done, just proofreading etc. Finally they told me it was done. I sent AR to go pick it up because mailing it would just delay us further.

As AR flipped through the homestudy in the office, he noticed that my last name was misspelled and told them. They edited the document and re-printed it while he waited. As soon as I got home I looked through it and it all seemed okay to me, so I faxed it to CHI in NY to have Carrie look it over. She called me a day after I faxed it and said that they left my father off of the Child Abuse Report Incident, which is a major big deal! Carrie also didn't like te way some things were worded either.

I called the homestudy agency on the phone to discuss the issues. I spoke to Marie, the director. She was pissy with me. I couldn't believe her attitude. She had the balls to say, "Your husband looked at it in the office and said it was fine!" Yeah, I told her after we waited 6 weeks for the damn thing, he flipped through it quickly and saw that you misspelled my last name. You certainly didn't think that was our approval, did you???" She was snippy with me and I told her that Carrie from CHI would be calling too because they wanted a few things re-worded. She was just annoyed and thought I was a pain in the ass. Yeah, but you took my $1,200 for the homestudy so you'd better believe that it has to be correct!

I just knew she was going to make me twist in the wind waiting for the corrections. Carrie called me later in the day to say that she told them of the changes that she wanted. They weren't too nice to her either. We were both pretty sure that they were going to make us wait for the correction, which easily could have been done in 10 minutes. I called them every day to see if it was done. Finally they told it was done and I got it on December 9th.

I had hoped to be DTC by the end of the month and now it just wasn't going to happen. With holidays upon us, I figured we were looking at late January to be DTC. CHI approved the homestudy and I sent it off to Newark on December 11, 2003 with my FINAL form, the 600-A. Once Homeland Security had my homestudy and the 600-A, they would ask give us all an appointment for fingerprinting. Once the fingerprints cleared, we would get the last piece of paperwork that we need for our dossier, the 171-H. The 171-H form means that we are approved by the Federal government to bring an orphaned chilld from another country to the United States.

More waiting....