Home Study Visits. Check.

Hurrah!
We are almost over the big hurdle of our home study! Our visit yesterday went much better than I expected...no water and all!

Of course with coming down from Anchorage, the first thing she asked when she got here was if she could use the bathroom! I simply let her know that our pump was in the process of being fixed, so we don't have water today, but here's the bathroom, don't flush, here's baby wipes for washing up with, I'm sorry for the inconvenience! It didn't seem to phase her a bit!

She asked Andrew for a tour of the house, which he was happy to do. Ironically, she didn't even see the girls' room, since Anna was taking a nap...but she basically just wanted to see how many bedroom/bathrooms were in the house. She was also impressed with our basement, "what a great playroom," to which we owe a debt of gratitude to our NC VBS team!

(The basement had been a huge worry of mine. Regrettably, I neglected to take a "before" picture. But just imagine a construction zone...with having just finished the apartment remodel job on the other side of the basement, we had boxes of plumbing parts, piles of electrical outlets and wires, a mound of insulation, bits and pieces and sheets of drywall, enough tools to outfit a hardware store, an extra toilet and bathroom sink laying around, and enough dust to create a man out of...all of this covering and creeping over every part of the basement so that we could harldy walk through it. Sound like a perfect part of a family home ready to be inspected by a social worker concerned about the safety of children? Hardly. Mark and I had just the night before asked ourselves how many years it would take to clean it all up. Knowing my concerns, the team came home from VBS on Tuesday afternoon and had the place gleaming and organized. I kid you not...it's an awesome sight to behold)!

At any rate, she was here for about 2 hours, tapping away at her notes on her laptop as we talked and as she interviewed Mark. The kids were extremely cooperative, answering her questions when needed, and playing quietly when not.

The only downside is that she didn't end up coordinating our visit with another family down in Homer...so we'll have a bigger chunk to pay for her travel expenses than we hoped for. But we already have almost half of the $650 that will be due...and I'm sure that God will provide the other half before we need it!

All in all, Judy was very encouraging about everything, and said she would have it written up for us to review in short order! Praise Jesus!