We met with our social worker on Saturday.  She was great and we were able to get comfortable with her right away.  She asked both of us questions about our upbringing including our parents, siblings and school history.  She also wanted a little information about our personality types and wanted to see the house.  Her comment:  white carpet: wow, that will be hard to keep clean.

We are meeting with her next Sunday on a more individual basis to discuss our marriage and philosophy toward raising children. Mike and I were raised very similarly: core family principles with a strong emphasis on values.  We plan to raise our child much the same way.  We both were extremely lucky to have such wonderful parents.

The latest update from the Korea program within our agency left us breathless.  If we can get our home study finished by early November, we have a good chance of getting a referral by the end of the year.  Of course, we then have the wait for travel.  We were told that Korea is really looking to build a domestic adoption program (and is even flirting with closing international adoption by 2012).  In anticipation of this phase, Korea has been decreasing EPs for international adoption.  Our agency, in turn, decided to scale back their program.  Due to blind luck or God’s intervention, we got lucky.  Korea was not as successful as it anticipated in its domestic program and there are kids available (mainly boys).
Our social worker emphasized that we really should get everything in by mid-November.  Hard not to get excited, but the realistic side of me still believes it will be longer.  Our goal is to just keep moving forward.