Profile- Check!

Oh happy day, our profiles were mailed off this afternoon!  50copies of our precious 11 pages full of pictures, text about our lives, and letters written to birthmoms by our family and friends, were sent off to our Adoption facilitator ready for birthmoms to view.  I've estimated that I have put in about 60 hours working on our profile...!  It has been an interesting task putting our lives down on paper in words and pictures. Thank you to everyone who helped us with this profile!  And thank you to my precious husband for putting up with me while we worked on it!!

PROFILE 
So we are just about done with our profile.  We got the pictures printed for the front cover, and we will be doing the final run-through/edit together tomorrow so that we can go to print on Monday.  This has been a huge task, but fun to put our life down on paper.
As far as the profile picture for the front cover goes, we had many to choose from (see last post), and many of you voted on which picture you thought would be best.  Long story short, we didn't like any of the pictures, and went for round three of photo shooting.  (Did I mention round one was an attempt to set the camera up on a tri-pod and run back and forth for each shot after pressing the button while arguing the entire time.  Round two was to have a friend take shots in her back yard).  Round three was to get a semi-professional photographer friend from church to take shots again in a more rural setting, and with a new attire.  And for those of you who mentioned that Scott should have his glasses on, we agreed.  But the problem with the glasses is that they tend to darken in the sun light which made it impossible to take take pictures outside with them on. So here is the final profile shot:

Which picture should we use?
For our profile we need to have a "professional" shot for the front cover.  We have taken SO many shots, and I am just not sure what we should use... if any of these?  Which one do you think might make a birth-mother choose us as parents for her baby??  Please vote (in the comments below) for one that you think is best... and why.  Or maybe none are good... constructive criticism welcome! 
                                                               #1:

                                                       #2:

                                                        #3

                                                           #4

                                                        #5

As I am putting our profile together, I have stumbled across many older pictures that bring back such great memories and moments in our marriage.

A very fun camping trip to the North Coast Redwoods with our sweet friends!  Such a fun time!

 Our "firstborn" Kona... I absolutely love this picture of him!

 Our "honeymoon" in Maui (five months after our wedding).  Who is that stud??  (No he doesn't work out, and yes, he still pretty much looks like that... he is naturally muscular... sick huh?)

 One of my favorite pictures with my boys J and E!  What happy boys!

Painting a picket fence and flowers on our niece's room in Michigan.  So much fun and so easy to paint details on flat walls!  (I have never understood why we must texture our walls here in CA)

MOUNDS of paperwork (not the candy bar)
So in my previous post I mentioned the "mounds" of paperwork that are currently spread over the dining room table.  We began our Home Study process last week and we were presented with loads of paperwork to complete.  We have three applications to fill out (yes 3!!) One from me, one from Scott, and one from both of us! You would think they would be a little redundant, but they are not.  It is amazing how many questions they ask us, things I frankly have never thought about before. It is a thorough study to say the least, and it is really too bad that all parents do not have answer these questions before they have children... the world would be a much better place if they did I think. We have to complete a physical exam, get fingerprinted, take CPR, etc...  The list is LONG!
The other thing consuming our lives (well my life mostly) is our profile.  For those unfamiliar with the adoptive process, potential adoptive parents have to put together a profile consisting of pictures and text about our life.  It is like a scrapbook of sorts.  When we complete it we will make copies of it that will be sent out for birth-moms to peruse as they begin the process of selecting an adoptive family for their unborn baby.  I have been working for DAYS on our profile in hopes of completing it by the end of the week so that I can send it off for Lifetime Adoptions to review.  We decided it would be easier to create the profile on the computer so that we could easily make changes.  Since I am seriously NOT a scrapbook-er, I thought this would be a better way to tackle the arduous task. I am happy to say that I am about 95% completed, and I am almost ready to send it off for review!
Needless to say all the paperwork and profile work has basically been consuming my time, and the rest of my life is currently on hold.  But I figure the sooner I get it all done the better... why procrastinate on paperwork... it only gets tougher to complete the longer you wait!  Back to work I go...

Adoption- let the journey begin!!
By now most of our friends and family know that we are in the process of Adopting a baby.  (If you did not get our email/letter, we sincerely apologize as we tried to cover everyone).
We are So excited to be beginning this new journey, and we look forward to the day that we are able to bring a little one into our home.  There is SO much to learn through this process, and it can be overwhelming at times, but we are taking it one step at a time.
We have been asked many questions about our adoption, so I thought I would list the facts that we know as of now:
1. We are adopting from a private Adoption Facilitator located in Northern CA.
2. We will be adopting an new born, and will most likely be present at the birth
3. Our adoption facilitor works with birth moms from all 50 states
4. From what we have heard most families working with this organization adopt within a year.
5. We will be adopting either a boy or girl, Caucasian or Caucasian mixed.
6. We are open to twins and sibling groups
7. The birth moms will see our profile, and if she likes us she will ask to speak with us.  If she chooses us, and if we feel like it is a good match for us, then we will have a match and go from there.
8. Birthmoms are only accepted into the program when they are at least 20 wks along in their pregnancy.  They work with the birth moms very closely, and thus the "reclamation rate" is very low for this company. (4-5% as opposed to 20-30%).  Reclamation is when the mother changes her mind after a match is made.
9. In Ca, birth moms have 30 days to change their mind.  In some other states they have 36-78 hrs to change their minds.
10. The facilitator we are working with very rarely deals with birth moms who have drug and alcohol abuse issues.

That is about all I can think of at the moment... did I miss anything?   Please ask if there is something I missed!

Shortly after we sent out our adoption announcements we learned from our adoption facilitator that there were multiple benefits if we were to get our adoption started in the month of December.  The benefits to us were so great, that we felt that God was giving us the go-ahead to get our total payment in, and get a jump-start on the process.  With fear and excitement we took the leap of faith.
One of the main reasons we chose to jump start the process was in hopes that we will be able to take advantage of the Federal Tax Credit/Refund in 2011.  The credit is a very significant amount for 2011 if we are able to finalize an adoption in 2011.  The credit may be cut by half or cease to exist in 2012, and that is why we are doing all we can to get the ball rolling... the rest is up to the Lord.  (More later on what you can do to support the Adoption Tax Credit that George W. Bush worked so hard for!)  We are very busy getting our profile together and the MOUND of paperwork for our home study. (more on that to follow...)

In our Christmas letter we did mention donations to the Adoption Fund through Lifetime (our facilitator).  As we stated, for any donations made, they (Lifetime) will deduct that amount from our total expenses.  They only allow a limited amount that is donated to be deducted.  After we sent out our Christmas letter we found out that during the last two weeks of December Lifetime Adoptions (our facilitator) increased the total amount we were able to donate to the foundation, (and thus have deducted).  We decided to take advantage of this.  When we paid our adoption expenses we chose to go ahead and donate the total limited amount they allowed for donations/deductions.  This means that the Foundation was able to receive more, and we were able to have more deducted. Any future donations (which can be sent to us directly) will essentially go back into our adoption fund for future adoption expenses such as attorney fees and travel expenses.  I hope that makes sense!!  We sincerely did not want to confuse anyone or mislead anyone who may be interested in donating.  We are blessed beyond measure by the opportunity we have to adopt, and we are extremely humbled by our friends and family who have shown us so much love and support. Thank you!!!  Please let us know if you have any questions as we want our friends and family to be "in the loop" as much as possible.  We will do our best to answer as we figure it all out!