Success!

Just a quick not to say that home study visit #1 complete! It took about 2 hours and was relatively easy, lots of questions that we have already had to think and talk about during this process. The anxiety (and cleaning obsession) was much worse than the actual visit.
The dogs did pretty well. She's not really a dog person so she mostly ignored them and eventually they got the message and they ignored her. She said good things about them for the pet portion of her paperwork, so we're glad they pulled it together enough to impress her.
The house tour went well and she didn't even pull out white gloves to check our baseboards! (Kim was disappointed). She also loved the baby room progress (you all will have to be kept in suspense, pictures to come later!)
We also found out yesterday that the agency that processes our fingerprints and background checks is backed up 14 weeks! 14 weeks!!!! Good thing we got ours done early!

She will be coming back to our house in a few weeks for one more visit where she will meet with each of us individually. However for right now there's a lot of relief and a lot of this going on in our house for one more step done!

Home study visit #1

Our first home study visit is this week! I believe there are 4 visits total, the next 2 will be one on one with our home study lady and only 1 needs to be in our home.The home study is a HUGE part of the steps that need to be completed before we can send our paperwork to China.
I think this is the part that makes Brian and I the most nervous as we don’t usually have strangers in our home judging every tiny detail (or at least if do, they are polite enough to do it behind our backs).
We also have 2 large dogs that LOVE people.
However, during the home study we need them to act a little less like this

And a little more like this  

To their credit, after the first minute with new people, they relax and are very much like the second picture, but that first minute they sometimes act like they have never seen a person before. And that the visitor may be wearing clothes made out of bacon.

So…if you have any dog training tips feel free to send them our way.
We’ll just be here scrubbing every inch of our house (folks, check your baseboards. In 3 years at this house we haven't cleaned them and they are GROSS! Thanks to my mom for pointing that out and making them my obsession this week) and praying it goes well!