"Racing" Right Along

Knock on wood, things are moving along as they should in the process to bring Francis home.  His legals arrived yesterday, so the next step will be ICPC approval.  Unfortunately, our criminal background checks, child abuse clearances, and Pennsylvania fingerprints expired – ready for this?  Last week.  I did the criminal background checks online yesterday, mailed out the request for the child abuse clearance this morning, and we’ll go for fingerprinting Saturday morning.  I wonder if the people who do the fingerprinting at the UPS store know who we are yet, seeing as this will be the fourth time we’re being fingerprinted there.  Fortunately, our homestudy is still good until the end of June.

The package that we sent to Francis reached him at the end of April.  We were beyond blessed to receive a few pictures of him with his photo album and a few of the things that we put in the package.  He looks happy to have a family, and this lightens our hearts.  In one of the pictures he is holding the cars we sent him and the smile on his face is so big and so genuine he has dimples!  This is the first time we are seeing these dimples and such a genuine smile – we are so happy to know that he really is happy, and that maybe we helped put that smile on his face.

We are just about totally finished with Francis’ room.  We are going to replace the window in there, and then it will be all ready.  Hopefully he likes Cars, because that’s what we did.  He’s even got a genuine tire from one of Darrell Waltrip’s race cars from years gone by.  We’re not sure if it will be a table, chair, or toy box yet, but it works well in the room and is a pretty cool addition.  His ceiling is decked out with glow-in-the dark stars and planets.  Overall, we’re thrilled with how it came out.  Here are some pictures: