Really?

I will admit it, I pride myself on my paperwork at school. As a special education teacher, my life includes tons of paperwork and I generally like to think I am pretty good about dotting the "i's" and crossing the "t's." I will admit this is a bit of an issue with me, but I like knowing when I go to the table everything that can be done beforehand has been done well.

So I knew in January when I was doing IEPs I obviously had too much going on when there were date issues on a couple of IEPs. I know, really no big deal, but it bugged me and it bugged me further when I realized I didn't catch one until after the meeting. (I love calling parents to say I made a mistake on their child's paperwork. It always goes so well. -Be sure to note the sarcasm.)

On the listserv a couple of families have been discussing checking their homestudies due to expiration dates. In the back of my head I knew I should check, but I kept putting it off. (Excuses: There was plenty of time. Referrals have really slowed down, so no big deal. I will do that over Spring Break. At this point, it can wait until school is done. etc.)

So today during the bi-monthly phone call with our caseworker from AGCI, "B" brought up expiration dates on the important items. FBI Fingerprints- We are good until November, so at the end of August we will need to think about redoing those. Favorable Determination Letter- It is good until March (tons of time). Homestudy- Oh, that expires today.

Yep, our homestudy expires today. Our path went from this:

{source: me}

to this.

 {source: me}

As soon as we were off the phone, I was pulling it out and trying to find the page that says it expires today. It took awhile, but it is in there. (I have to be honest, I was really hoping "B" was wrong.) We already have a meeting set up with our homestudy agency on May 27th for our 6 month DCFS checkup, but we might be doing that a bit earlier. Am I panicking? Yes.

So what have I done? Well, I stared at our homestudy for a bit, I will admit that. I still can't believe I let the date go unnoticed. I have also emailed the awesome "L" at The Baby Fold. "L" already has an email waiting for her when she gets into her office tomorrow morning. Hopefully this will be painless and quick.

So we will need to:

• update the homestudy
• possibly be re-fingerprinted for the homestudy update
• have the homestudy be authorized by the state (it took about 8 weeks the first time)
• send the homestudy update to immigration 
• send state approved update to AGCI