The 3 1/2 Hour Full Disclosure Meeting

Yes, you read that title correctly.  Our Full Disclosure meeting was 3.5 hours.  This is after driving 4.5 hours to the city our kiddo lives in for said meeting (after both of us working full 8 hour days), then having the meeting this morning, and driving home.  Needless to say, we are both EXHAUSTED.  Mama S and I didn't have to attend in person, but we felt that it was too important to not be there in person.  Considering the fact that the meeting wasn't even scheduled until Monday afternoon, it's pretty impressive that we managed to pull it all off with little to no preparation ahead of time.  

So the meeting...if you all remember, we received our kiddo's file when we went to meet her not even 2 weeks ago.  Since that time we have been busy reading, notating, highlighting and tabbing all 581 pages of it.  Again, you read that number correctly.  581 pages.  Fortunately for all of us involved, they didn't actually READ all those pages, but just stuck with the most recent child study, which was lengthy in it's own right.  I was fairly surprised that there weren't more people in attendance as we thought the Guardian ad Litem, supervisor of adoptions and therapist would also be there.  Instead, we had the friend-worker, case worker, adoption recruiter, Mama S and myself, which was a relief to be perfectly honest.  The majority of our questions were answered and the few that don't have answers yet have been added to the list for her workers to find out for us.  

It was great to hear from our girl's worker that she seems just as anxious to see what the next step is as we are.  Apparently, she had texted her at some point after meeting us and asked what happens next.  It gives us peace of mind to hear that she wants to know what is going on.  The answer to that question...supervised visitation.  We will be hearing back some time in the next few days about when we get to go back to see her, but the planned time is some time the week of Thanksgiving.  However, they did mention that they may go ahead and give her our phone numbers, so we can chat on the phone before the next visit.  :-)  As we were leaving, they were working out a time to take her the scrapbook, journal and pen set we got for her.  Now we're back to the waiting game, but at least the waiting span is getting shorter in time.