Profile Books DONE! (August 2009)

We had Karen preview our Profile books when she was here for the homestudy. We made a couple of changes, ordered it, and it came in today! We got 4 to start with. Multiple copies are needed so they can be given to more than one birthmom to look at if necessary. We signed them, and I (Sharon) happened to go to Orlando this very day, so I dropped the books off at the Bethany office. Karen was there and said they looked great! Now, birth mothers can look at them and consider choosing us to parent their babies!

What is a profile book you ask?
It's a scrapbooker's dream!
It's a "photo album" that tells the story of our family. Who we are, what we do, kind of a glimpse into our lives.
It also includes a "Letter to the Birth parents" which gives us a chance to tell the birth mother how we appreciate her, a little of why we want to adopt, and to give a basic introduction.
We included pages about us individually as well and told about our "hobby"- traveling.

It's a daunting task to put your personality into a book and try to communicate to strangers who you are. Bethany gave us some great tips though... like don't crowd the page with pictures, don't be too wordy, and make sure the template/design looks like you. For instance they had a big burly military guy and his wife turn in a profile book. His wife had mostly done the book...there were lots of pink hearts and flowers and what not... when you stepped back and looked at the book, it didn't "match" who they were. So it's a bit of a challenge, but it was neat too thinking our son or daughter's birth mother would be looking at it and going "Them. I want them."

To make it look professional, Bethany recommended doing the profile on like Snapfish, Shutterfly, or Flickr so that its a nice printed book. Not that homemade "scrapbooks" don't look nice, it's just that the printed books "show" well and hold up better than the more delicate homemade ones. The birth mother will keep the profile as a keepsake. We have a mac so we made a book on iPhoto and it turned out really well.

We're on the waiting list! At any point a birth mother may be looking at our profile out there!