Update with little momentum

Good news! The Little Envelope That Could arrived safely in Friendswood, TX on Tuesday. Within 1 hour of arrival, I received an email that our application and contract had been processed. Three hours later, I received an introduction from the Ethiopia coordinator, along with approximately 25 documents and forms with extremely specific instructions. I immediately felt completely overwhelmed by the amount of effort involved in these forms and had to set them aside for a little while. But now, we're ready to move forward.
Today, I received an update from our homestudy worker. She has received Craig's background checks from Wisconsin and Minnesota. Pennsylvania is (hopefully) on its way. Iowa is.....in absentia. When I contacted Iowa about two months ago, they were surprisingly uncooperative when compared to Oklahoma, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. They said they did not do background checks for former residents and refused to listen as I explained that an international homestudy required one. Not to be deterred, I managed to obtain the necessary paperwork and submitted the form. It seems they have deterred us anyway as they may have refused to run the check. Grrr.... No worries though. Apparently, if our homestudy worker calls the State of Iowa and the same frustrating woman answers the phone and gives the same response, all we have to do is document this in the homestudy and we're good to go.
Our homestudy is now approaching the 6th month mark, which is quite unusual for a homestudy. I feel a little frustrated knowing that we would have had the homestudy completed two months ago and we would be on our way if we wouldn't have taken that wrong turn at Albuquerque and ended up in China's program for a couple of months. Apparently, when your homestudy is the ripe old age of 6 months, you need to update it and do another interview and home visit. The original home visit filled me with intense panic and I'm not looking forward to doing it all over again. Part of me has developed the little Q-Bert balloon (props to you if you know what I'm talking about) because that means that our homestudy will be delayed by this additional visit. Another part of me thinks, "Well, the house is due for a thorough cleaning."
I know we'll eventually get there. I know it, but I'm starting to feel like we're stuck in the adoption version of Groundhog Day. We're doomed to constantly relive, redo, and revise the homestudy and we never actually get to the adoption part. I recall that Bill Murray was able to eventually reach February 3, but it took him several years. I'm hoping the groundhog has a shorter eternity for us.