Our friends are really coming through for us in the adoption process!

Brian woke up early on a Sunday morning and took some fantastic photos of us for our birthmother letter cover picture. We’re going over them now and hope to have some to send to our contact at the agency soon. I’m trying to prepare myself for the fact that she said in all likelihood she’ll veto all of them the first few go arounds. It sounds tough, but they’re really looking out for us and know what is important to have in that picture. This one picture is very likely what will grab the birth mother’s attention from a stack of letters so it’s important to get it just right. As soon as we have some good shots I’ll share here.

James is creating the letter in Publisher. It came together amazingly well in just one sitting. Ian and I still have to review the text some more, but James whipped up a fantastic layout, font and color scheme that looks professional, yet comfortable and casual. Again, she said that she would probably have us go through 4-6 revisions of the letter and text as well, so I have to tell myself not to get too attached to this first attempt. Which I’m horrible at when I write, I can only bring myself to do minimal edits and never gut entire sections.

We’ll have a website as well. Once the letter is done we’ll port it to the site and elaborate on it there. I’ll share all that here when it’s ready. We’re even going to have an 800 number for toll free calls.

We’re trying to keep this going because as you can see it’s a process that takes several weeks at a minimum. The first few iterations of the letter are sent via mail so she can see the real, printed deal and comment not only on picture and text but also font, print quality, paper quality, colors, etc. Eventually they accept PDF but until then we’ll either be doing expensive next day deliveries or anxiously waiting snail mail to arrive. Thankfully the pictures she’ll do an initial round digitally to help us hone in on one or two potential winners. All of this while finishing up paperwork like FBI fingerprint checks which can take weeks as well.