Profile Pictures...again

At the beginning of the month I received an e-mail from our adoption agency asking for new pictures for our profile.  We have been with them for a year now and they wanted to freshen up our profile.  This is understandable, but it still made me cringe.  It was so hard to get enough good photos last time, I did not look forward to trying it again, especially because when I got the e-mail Nathan was still spending all his available time in the fields helping with planting.  But they finished last week and we've been able to slip in a few photo shoots and I mailed off the new pictures yesterday.

The setting in this picture is Nathan's parents' backyard by the creek and I think it's a lovely place for a photo.

This was taken at my parents' house after our nephew's baptism.  I believe the phrase I used for Nathan's hair is "a little overwhelming."  But it's a good picture.  By the way, you can't tell, but I'm wearing a really cute dress in this...just saying.

I love this one.  It's just really good.  I don't remember why I decided cartoon character T-shirts was a good idea, but I still think so.

We took these last ones yesterday at my Mom and Dad's.  I think they're supercute.

Yep, we even had a wardrobe change yesterday.  There are several of us in our blue and green and I love them all, but this might be the best one.

Nathan really wanted a picture of us in front of one of his Dad's tractors.  We took two and this is definitely the better picture.

I think I sent more than one picture of each set except the first one.  I hope these work for the agency and I also hope they retain some of the older ones.  There were one or two that we were really good.

Also, I will post soon about having one year in with the agency and how we are doing with that, I just haven't worked up the nerve yet.

Parent Profile

Yesterday I mailed to the adoption agency the disk with our parent profile materials on it.  Getting all the information together was harder than I had initially thought.  It was a lot of listing of favorites, and Nathan never claims to have a "favorite" anything.  Then we had to write short essays about our lives, our home and our families while attempting to make everything sound great and keep a certain humiliy.  But I think the hardest part was getting pictures.  I mentioned in a earlier post that we needed at least 15 pictures of just the two of us.  We have never had that many pictures of us.  Finally, we just took the camera and went first to my parents and then my in-laws and asked them to take our pictures a bunch of times.  It worked out okay.  These are a couple of the pictures.

We actually had this one in the house, it's from a recent Thanksgiving.  I don't know which year exactly.  I was surprised at how many pictures we were able to come up with in the house and through friends' and families' cameras.

So, Nathan got a rake for his last birthday.  I don't know whose idea it was for us to take an "American Gothic" picture, pretty sure it was Nathan's.  I don't imagine they'll use this one, but we sent everything we could find.

This is one my mom took, I think it's great.

My father-in-law took this picture on the old merry-go-round next to their house.  I wasn't dressed up the best, but it's such a nice picture.

So, initially we were going to send seperate pictures of the cats, because we didn't a have a picture of them together that was nice.  Then a few weeks ago the cats and I were all hanging out in the bedroom and I looked over and they were sitting like this.  It's perfect!  I took a couple, but this is definitely the best one.

Marketing

Not long after we signed the contract with the adoption agency we are going with, we received a couple of packets of information one from our agency and the other from the group the agency operates under, who are going to be doing the homestudy.  We had to fill out in all kinds of information about our personalities and why we want to be parents and then we had to ask friends and acquaintances if they would be comfortable answering questions about us as people and as parents as our references.  Thanks everyone, by the way!

But to me, right now, the hardest part is the information we have to give for the other packet we had to fill out, the parent profile.  It feels kind of like an essay test.  Tell us about your home, your lives, your family and your habits.  And then, write the "Dear Birthmother" letter.  I'm a writer by nature but this is unlike anything I've ever attempted before.  We are basically selling ourselves and our lives to women and families who are making the agonizing decision of who they want to raise their children.  I did my best. 

Also, we had to come up with pictures.  Pictures of the house, the cats, our families and us.  We have to have 15+ pictures of ourselves.  We personally have very few pictures of ourselves.  We had to go pillaging our friends and families' cameras.  Even then it wasn't enough so we asked a friend of ours to come take pictures of us at the house.  We have everything but the pictures nailed down enough to send in a preliminary draft.  Bring on the closeups!