Monday, October 8, 2012

Moving to Kansas, and a Social Worker Comes Calling


We are starting to get over the initial shock and settled into the news that we will be a Kansas/Texas family soon.  Don't get me wrong, I still have my moments (as any of you who saw me yesterday can attest), but with so much to do, we've become really focused on the task at hand. And actually, that is helping.  Jake and I are both doers, and the planning helps with the coping.  The Army is keeping him so busy this month that much of the immediate doing falls on me, and I'm not complaining about that.

We think we may have found Jake a place to live at Ft. Riley.  It's a townhouse neighborhood in Junction City, Kansas, called Patriot Pointe.  It's very close to both the Army post and the airfield he'll be working at. It's a cute little two-story, two bedroom townhouse. Nothing huge, but then it'll have only one inhabitant most of the time, so it's not like we need some grand palace.  When we filled in the application, it asked us to list a move-in date.  We put November 15, which is probably about when Jake will need to be there.  My heart jumped when I realized that's just over a month away.  So soon! But at least that's (almost) one thing off the list.  Then we just have to figure out what to do about the Louisiana house...

The other major thing that happened in the past few days was the home portion of our home study.  We spent about four hours with our social worker Bernadette on Friday, doing individual and family interviews, and submitting to a home inspection.  If there was anything unacceptable about our home, or anything about our personalities she found alarming, our SW didn't say anything about it.  Either it means we did well, or Bernadette would kill at poker. In any event, all of the components (paper, and in-person) are completed and all that remains of the home study process is for her to write the report.

I'm still having a mild heart attack about getting everything done by December 1, though.  We cannot file our immigration application until the home study report is completed, and Bernadette is out this week for surgery. If we are lucky, she will have a report to us next week and we can file the immigration application right away.  Then we just have to pray that we get approved by USCIS quickly so we can get our dossier in the mail by the deadline. And if we can't, we just have to pray that the Philippine government will let us be 2013 participants instead of 2012 participants, so that all the hard work wasn't for naught.

More and more this fourth quarter of 2012 resembles a giant roller coaster for our family.  But not one of those nice new metal coasters with the smooth loops and spins. Nope, this is the Texas Giant, in all it's huge, wooden, jerky, shake-you-till-you-think-you-might-vomit glory!


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