Adoption Orientation

So today we went to the Riverside County Adoption Orientation. It was from 9am - 2pm and by 2pm we were ready to leave. We found out some very interesting information and hopefully some good and some hard, not bad, news.

• SO they will not accept our foster license from San Diego County, so we do have to do all of that all over. The way the lady explained it is that even thought it says it is issued from the state of California, it's not, even though it is essentially the same. It is complicated but bottom line is that it has to be issued from this state worker here in Riverside.
  
• There is only one state worker that licenses foster homes in Riverside....so that means that right now she is already booked until May. But before you can even start your process you have to get "accepted" before they will even work with you (totally different in SD). So they won't even send/give you your finger scans paper (which you have to pay for here) work until they accept you, which it takes up to a month to be accepted. Add that to only one state worker and it becomes a messy and long process just to get licensed and that has nothing to do with the County who are the ones that actually place the children in your home.
• SO the County may, may, accept some of our pride classes....may! If they don't then we will have to go to a class 3 hours a week for 11 weeks, that is another 3 months added! But we are crossing our fingers that they will accept some of the classes, so we can cut down our hours.
• The do not host anything on Saturday and because both people have to be there, Robert has to take off work ever time we get inspected or have trainings during the day.
  
• The bedroom has to be cleared of anything other than the crib/bed, car seat, and a dresser. The closet has to be empty. The room can only store the child's stuff and nothing else.
  
• We have to get a land line phone and they will not budge on that (in SD cell phones were ok).
• The state worker here is a lot more strict than the one on SD. She is going to be a stickler, but she sounds nice.
• We have to pay for our own CPR/ First aid classes.
• We have to get a carbon dioxide monitor.
• This state work hates guns so....We HAVE to buy a safe, not just trigger locks, to lock them up and lock up the ammo in a separate area, no biggy, but costly.
  
• The County workers didn't talk very much so we still don't know what we will have to do for them other than fill out paper work and the 33 hours of pride classes, interviews, and house study also.
• Good thing: we don't need dog license
• The list goes on and on but I don't want to bore you with all the details....
  

I haven't talked with Robert yet about this but I think this time I would like to get license for 2 to 3 children. Even though I don't know if we would take three at once (I would secretly love it) I feel that we should keep our options open. I also think I want to open our age range to 0 - 5 years, before it was only 0 - 2 years. I hope buy opening up the age range and the amount of children that we could possible adopt a sibling set, wouldn't that be awesome.

Ok, I need to stop because talking about this gets me thinking and then I get overwhelmed with those things that I cant change.

Overall, I am very excited to get started again. I am not blinded in the fact that this process in going to take forever and will be tedious, but I am just glad to be progressing in a forward manner.