Not the way I would have chosen to spend the day...

One of the requirements of a homestudy is that all people and pets in a household have had a recent medical exam.  Last time we adopted I tracked down all the providers that had seen any of our kids during the previous year and had them fill out the agency-provided medical form and get it notarized, and then made appointments for the remaining kids and for Curtis and me (who had to be seen by a physician rather than a PA or NP).  This proved to be a huge hassle, so I decided that this time, I'd just take everyone in for a quick check-up and get it all done at once so that we only had one provider to deal with.  Thankfully, with the help of a very kind nurse, we were able to arrange for one physician to see everyone, and for one notary to notarize all of the forms.  The kids did amazingly well in spite of the fact that it wasn't much fun for any of them.  You can see from this photo that the annoyance level increased with age.  ;)

Jackson wasn't seen this day because he got beaten up during recess a couple of days earlier (yes, really) and I'd had to take him to the clinic to be seen, so his form was filled out by someone else and was waiting for us when I picked up the others.  (He is OK, but he was very sore and the PA thought he had a mild concussion.  The joys of third grade...)  After the kids' visits, I had to take our dog and cat to the vet to get their immunizations done, and because I couldn't find our cat carrier, a brand new shirt that I was wearing is now in the trash thanks to my terrorized cat shredding the crud out of it.  Waaaaaahhhh!

The kids were seen on Monday, and Curtis and I had our doctor visits on Tuesday.  I made cookies for the nurse, doctor and notary that pulled all this together for us, picked up the forms, and mailed them off to our agency that afternoon.  Awesome!  I am amazed at how quickly this is all coming together!  The only thing our agency is still waiting on is our education certificates (which will be emailed to them tomorrow) and two letters of reference (which should hopefully get there this week).