Wednesday night on June 9th we got a phone call from our caseworker. She left us a voicemail. She wanted to let us know that if we approve we would be going to committee on a kido Monday afternoon June 14th. We called her back and quickly arranged a impromptu meeting at our house for 8:30pm that night.
We should add a little background information here. Normally potential families submit their homestudy’s, if the caseworker thinks the family might be good match then the caseworker sends a larger amount of information back to the family to review. Time passes and when the caseworker feels she has a few good matches she then sends one to three families to committee. From that committee one family is picked and one is picked as a backup family. This process takes time.
Well we submitted our homestudy on this kido about two months ago, and were not in the top group picked. In fact we never heard back or got any additional information from the caseworker, which is pretty typical. It seems the caseworker picked three families to go to committee and just this week two of those families dropped out of the process. Our caseworker was able to get the kidos caseworker to look at us again and she liked us enough to offer to send us to committee with the one remaining family. Another family tried to get in for the third spot, but the kido’s caseworker said no to them. So we might not be the top of the list, but we are not on the bottom.
Getting ready for a committee in 4 days is insane. We had to fill out one more questionnaire, which we did Thursday night after dinner and then about 40 emails the next morning back in forth between the two of us, polishing the questionnaire until it shined.
Saturday we drove around and got some last minute photos of some playgrounds and the local elementary school for our hello book (The hello book will be given to the kido IF we are selected Monday). The rest of the weekend was spend trying very hard not to think about Monday. We played video games, watched tons of TV, even redecorated a bathroom.
Because of the speed of the this and the emotions that are happening right now, we have decided not to go public with this part of our adoption story until it’s over. We decided not to post on Facebook or tell friends yet. No reason to get anyone excited until we know for sure. It’s not uncommon to go to committee several times before you are selected and this is only our first time.
We don’t get to go to the committee meeting, only the 3 committee members and the caseworkers involved will be present. We did the hand off of the Hello book to our caseworker Sunday night. We could tell she was picking her words very carefully with us not to raise or lower our hopes any. She did say all the hard work was done and it will be down to which family can offer more to the kido. Reading online seems to make us think they can be selected over the smallest things.
It’s really hard not to doubt yourself in a time like this. But we keep trying to push those type of thoughts away. Pretty sure Monday is going to be a hard and emotional day for us no matter what the out come. But we are really trying to see this in a good light, even if we are not picked this will give us some really good information for next time.
Committee meeting is at 1:30pm and should last about 3 hours, so by 4:30pm on Monday the 14th 2010 we should be getting a phone call that may change our lives forever.