Timelines are nice

What follows immediately is my original post. Unfortunately before I had the chance to publish it things changed AGAIN. The newest news is at the bottom.

I love timelines. The finality of knowing how long I'll have to keep my enthusiasm (or sometimes dread) in check is freeing. I love having boxes to check, milestones to accomplish -- makes the waiting so much easier for this patience-lacking lady.

I'm so very happy to say that after months of wishy-washy, back-and-forth, no-solid-answer-available discussions about the timeline of our adoption, we finally got some answers last night. We completed our very last adoption training last night. Like the back cover of a hefty volume of reading, we closed our training with the last session of Behavior and Crisis Management Techniques. It was a freeing moment. The absolute best part of the training wasn't the material itself but rather the presenter. We've had small group access (the class is capped at 12) for 8 hours to the Adoption Coordinator with our agency. We were able to ask anything and everything we wanted; I only wish now I'd taken a list with me to make sure I didn't forget any questions!

Based on his responses we were able to construct a "best-case" timeline for the completion of our placement. So here it is:
1. HVAC inspection -- all gas-fired heaters have to be inspected for carbon monoxide leaks. TBD by or around Oct 4.
2. Fire Marshal Inspection -- TBD by or around Oct 11 (this particular step is dependent on the HCFMO's schedule. I should know more this afternoon).
3. All remaining paperwork (including inspection) submitted by Oct 12; homestudy scheduled.
4. Homestudy completed sometime between Oct 19 and Nov 2. (depends entirely on the schedule of the caseworker the study is assigned to -- some get out to homes within a week, some take 3 weeks).
5. Case worker has 14 days from date of study to submit to his/her supervisor for approval. (between Nov 2 and Nov 16).
6. Review of our file and paperwork process takes about 3 days to officially license our home (between Nov 5 and Nov 19).
7. PLACEMENT!! Based on others' stories this could occur as quickly as 72 hours after licensing approval.

Obviously this is a best case scenario. There are plenty of opportunities for issues outside and beyond our control to arise and interrupt our plans. While not an ideal situation we are prepared for that reality. We are just thrilled to have even this most basic of timelines! And we are beyond excited to know that we could have a new little one in our home by Christmas!

***What follows here is the newest information.
We were able to contact our HVAC guy and he agreed to call Monday, Oct. 4th to schedule a time that day to stop by and do the inspection. Excited by the news and eager to continue our positive steps forward, I called the fire marshal's office to schedule the final inspection. It was there I hit a veritable brick wall. As a side bar, the woman who answers the phone in the Harris County Fire Marshal's Office is the antithesis of a ray of sunshine. It's as if she's sucked on persimmons all day. Anyway, we discovered a rather hidden inspection application on the HCFMO website (it's a terrible website with incredibly conflicting information). What we shortly discovered was that once the application had been received and processed it could take up to 4 weeks for our inspection to be processed. We asked all the questions we could think of to ask and were told that the schedule was up to the individual inspectors. We've attempted to find a private certified fire safety inspector to do the inspection but it seems that is a difficult person to locate. So now we wait. We hope that the inspection won't take 4 weeks to schedule but it might. We may still make it before Christmas, but our level of confidence in that fact isn't quite as high. If you are looking at the dates above, add about 30 days to every step beginning with step 2.