I am not done writing about our first meetings and early experiences with our adopted children, however I had to interrupt and share about the last two days.

I meant to write this up for yesterday and have it be a "Love Thursday" post, but Thursday came and went before I had a chance to do any writing.

But, I need to tell you all that I am in love. I am in love with our new social worker! Yesterday our new social worker came to do our visits for our homestudy update. She came first in the early afternoon to meet with Josh and I, then she came back at night to meet with all of the kids, and then she came back this morning to wrap things up.

I was very nervous about having a new social worker, since our family is unconventional in so many ways. I know that there are many social workers who would take issues with just some of the realities of our family, never mind all of them combined! We have artificial twins, we have done adoptions close together, we have lots of kids close in age, we are working on adopting our eleventh child and then there is the HIV issue. I have heard a lot of horror stories about difficult social workers. I was nervous.

I was also anxious to get this done, as the rest of our dossier is sitting in a pile at AAI, ready to go on its way to Ethiopia so we can get in line for a court date once the courts reopen. So this homestudy is the last piece of needed paperwork and is of course, very important.

Well, this social worker came in and was just super supportive and encouraging. She had no issue with our family size. She was completely supportive of our decision to adopt children who are HIV+. She thought our home was beautiful and she was impressed with how clean and organized it is. She said I had done a great job managing our finances. She kept saying how impressed she was with Josh and I, and she said that she thought we had chosen a wonderful path in life. And best of all, after she met with each of the kids (one on one), she told us that there was something "different" about our kids compared to most kids she deals with, and that she thought that they were just amazing and wonderful, and then she attributed it all to our parenting. Talk about a compliment!

With all the criticism and doubt we get from so many, it was such a wonderful change of pace to have someone come in and just think we were doing everything right. And best of all, she is going to write up the homestudy next week, so we are very close to being officially waiting.

So, I am in love with our new social worker, and I am super glad that the visits are done and we are so close to proceeding with the Ethiopian end of the process. I wish we had found this lady seven adoptions ago.