Weekend Break

This weekend we took a break from the overwhelming mountain of adoption paperwork and went to Oktoberfest with some close friends of ours. While we were there we couldn’t resist making a couple purchases.

We found this very cute painted wood cutout. We were shocked that they actually had one for four cats!

We also made our first baby purchase. I couldn’t pass up this adorable cow hat.  

Moving Forward

Thanks to our wonderful friends and family we have been able to gather more than enough high quality pictures for our parent profile. This means that we were able to move on to the next step sooner than expected. Now we are focused on writing the text portion of our profile. This has proved to be very challenging. As you can imagine, it is not easy trying to find the words to adequately describe your partner, lifestyle, family, and parenting style. 

We would like to take a moment to thank Tina, a photographer friend of ours. She spent an afternoon with us taking a lot of pictures around our home and community. These pictures will work wonderfully within our profile. As you can see from the pictures below, she does very good work. Her website is http://tinaharpold.smugmug.com/

Since we have made good gains in developing our profile, Joe and I have decided to submit our application to the adoption agency. The agency is 'Adoptions of Wisconsin' http://www.adoptionsofwisconsin.com. They have wonderful placement rates, great reviews, and are very prompt and informative when answering our questions. We are excited to start working with them.

Picture Troubles

We are currently in the process of gathering pictures for our parent profile. For those who don’t know, a parent profile is basically a book about Joe and I that will be shown to birth parents. The pictures are the most important part of a profile because it helps birth parents to visualize what our lives are like (hobbies, family, est).

Unfortunately, I have been struggling trying to find pictures. For one, Joe avoids the camera whenever possible. Despite this, I currently have more (useable) pictures of him then I do of myself. This is because most of my pictures are on Facebook and are not high enough quality to use in a profile. I was told to track photos to their original source.  Easier said than done! I lost all of my pictures when my computer crashed and I have no idea where my more recent SD cards are. 

Right now we have about 30 pictures. My goal is to get 40 to 50 so that we have some options on which ones to put in the profile. There are still some pictures I am trying to track down. However, if anyone happens to have pictures of Joe and I, either together or separate, that are fairly recent, please let me know.