The Process

Snowflakes Embryo Adoptions follow the best practice adoption methods. Although this isn’t required by the government, they feel (and we agree) that it’s beneficial for adoptive parents to go through all of the same adoption training and education.  Which means for the last 2 months or so, we’ve been in the THICK of adoption paperwork! Anyone who has ever adopted before knows how much paperwork is involved.

We filled out a basic preliminary application and paid the first round of fees. Once that was received, we we’re accepted into the Snowflake Family Evaluation (SFE) process. Although we’re not doing a traditional “home study” our SFE has many of the same components.  We had to do a FBI fingerprint background check, driving records check, physical exams, request multiple references, send copies of our marriage license & birth certificates and much, much, much more.  Luckily (and those of you who know me in real life can probably attest to this) I kind of have a thing for paperwork. I get a little bit excited about having a list of items to check off and boxes to fill out. I mean, I am an administrative assistant after all. 

We had our first meeting with our social worker Megan yesterday afternoon.  I was a little bit nervous, but mostly just excited to keep moving forward. We met her at the Nightlight offices in Anaheim Hills.  She was super sweet and down to earth and as soon as we started talking all my nervousness melted away.  It's super encouraging that she's also a believer and someone who genuinely cares about getting embryos adopted! The time flew by and our 90 minute meeting was over.

We were able to schedule our other two meetings/interviews and Megan said that we should have a completed home study by this time next month! We'll meet again at their offices for the "individual" meetings on Saturday the 22nd, and then do our home visit on Sunday, the 23rd. 

The home visit has kind of been weighing on me ever since we started the adoption process so I'm happy to finally have an actual deadline. Megan reassured us that she's not going to be looking in closets or under the bed - rather it's just confirming that there are no obvious safety hazards in the home - but still, a home visit just sounds intimidating.  But now I officially have 13 days to do a deep cleaning, paint the kitchen sink, pull out all the weeds in the mostly dead front planter and train the cats to do a welcome song and dance when she arrives. (ok, maybe not all of those things).

Currently we are ALMOST done with the paperwork side of our SFE. We’re still waiting on Donny’s blood test results, we need to watch 3 adoption webinars and write mini-reports, and we have a little more reading to finish - but we are SO CLOSE!