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:
