The newest adventure

Lee and I were married in October 2004 after dating a whole 2 months and 4 days!  He brought to the marriage a lovely 6 year old daughter and I brought 2 lovely daughters ages 4 and 8 . Believe it or not our blended family blended very nicely and even now at ages 11, 13, and 14 they don't refer to each other as step-sisters but only as sister. 
Recently Lee and I have felt a calling to foster parent and adopt another child. There's so much red tape to get approved, so many mountains to be moved, and such a realization that without fully relying on God, I would lose my mind in the process. 
Our journey to adoption/ fostering began officially on July 19th at an inquiry meeting with DHS. At said meeting I asked tons of questions and brought home my first packet of paperwork to fill out....thus beginning the process! This is the part I would describe as akin to finding out you're pregnant. Sure the stick has 2 lines and you're happy, BUT  the irrational "what if's" kick in immediately and you don't wanna tell people before you're reasonably sure everything is gonna be ok. After background checks are notorized and fingerprinting done and so on, we get to fill out a form telling dhs what kinds of children we will or will not accept. (big advantage over a pregnancy here) So Lee and I happily discuss what we think we can and can't handle on issues like race (any is fine), gender (boy),age (2-9) ,birth defects , etc.
Then step 2, the home study, happened on August 3rd. More paperwork. In fact I got a stack bigger than the first to fill out! Initial home study went well. There was a couple things we had to do like get a septic test done and put up or lock up all things sharp (including kitchen knives). She took our background checks and said they should be processed in about 2 weeks. About 5 weeks later we had background checks back!  Now for the next mountain. Classes are offered Tues and Thurs. Classes are required to adopt thru the state. Lee drives a truck Mon- Thurs. and cannot afford a 6 week vacation to take classes.  I find out Harrison has weekend classes. Our caseworker gets midsouth to forward our info to Little Rock where they schedule the classes for Harrison. (yeah that might make your head spin if you overthink it!) As it stands now we should get an invitation to a Saturday only class in Harrison within the next few weeks.  In the meantime we have to form a full support group of babysitters and support people. Each member of said group has their own huge packet to fill out. And references and tons of other paperwork. 
And then there's the waiting....lots of waiting (probably more than if we were actually pregnant) to hear what our next move will be. So now we wait for an invite to the required  classes. And we learn patience. Which just so happens NOT to be a skill I was born with! And we know that ultimately God is in control, and it will all work all like it's supposed to, and we keep the faith that our foster children and our future son will all arrive someday not too far away!