We're almost to the birthmoms....

What you see there on our kitchen table is the stack of paperwork being submitted for our home study. We've checked off the list I wrote about a couple of weeks ago - and this morning Eric took the stack to work, scanned it in the super fast way for me, and we emailed it to our home study agency. Now we wait for the visits to begin.

I've had a phone conference with the graphic designer we'll work with. She's in Madison, WI. Seems strange that we won't actually get to meet - but that's the way it is with most of her clients. Adoptive parent profiles is all she does - and she has a very high success rate. If you want to see what those look like, check out her website at ourchosenchild.com. Look under the samples tab. If you take a look and think - "you should definitely include...." - will you please email me? Thanks. :)

When I met with our case worker on July 5th, I got about five samples of profiles - which they actually refer to as "birthmother letters". They are more like mini-yearbooks than letters (which you'll see if you check out the website). Anyway, it's a bit daunting to pull together these photos and to write exactly who we are. In my first draft, I was trying to appeal to every birth mom, instead of trying to be ourselves. I was super perky. There were too many exclamation points. Maybe it was my mood - but re-reading it - there's no way someone would meet us and think that text went with us.

Now, we're on to the second draft. I'm on to the second draft, I should say. It's almost done. It's much easier when writing about who we really are than who we think we should be to appeal to every possible birthmom out there. Hopefully I can finish most of it today (Weds), and we can get things to the designer. Then she'll get us a proof by the end of next week.

After that, another two weeks for edits.... and then we finally go into the birthmom showcase! We'll be on display :) We will likely be shown to about 6-10 birthmoms a month, I think. I can't remember if it's a month or a week.

Also - if you have pictures - please email them! (even if you think I have them already).

Thanks, everyone, for your kindness and support. We love you :)