Home Study Approved!

Can I get a woohoo!?

Our home study has been completed, officially approved, and mailed to USCIS, so they can begin processing the I-600A. 

Our agency emailed us the home study for review on Tuesday night, made the few corrections we suggested, and approved it the next day. 

It is very beautifully written, they did an amazing job. It is very weird to read about our lives on paper and from the perspective of another person. How they were able to condense everything into 17 pages is beyond me. They seem to have covered every aspect of our lives, and the lives of our immediate family members. I even learned something new about my husband! 

The home study includes sections about each of us, our marriage, our values, our outlook on parenting, and the factual part listing our financials, medical information etc. 

The most surreal thing was to read the title "mother" and then my name. Sometimes I feel that we get so wrapped up in the process, the technicalities of the paperwork, and the long wait, that it's almost easy to forget what is at the end of all of this.

We are almost done with our part, now all that is missing is a letter to the birth family and some photos of us that will accompany the home study when it eventually goes to Korea. I have to admit that I am so clueless on which photos to send (I am always taking pictures, so I am in none of them), and even more so on what to write to the birth family. We were told that it is highly unlikely that the birth family will ever read our letter, but what if they do? I do not have the slightest idea what to say.  But the cluelessness doesn't stop there; I am even obsessing about what kind of stationary I should use! 

We'll probably finish this in the next couple of weeks, so everything is ready to go to Korea when our I-600A is approved (the estimate for that is mid-September - yikes!).