Adoption Book

In my excitement over Josh getting job offers, I didn't think about what that meant for us in other areas.  The biggest being we can finally do the formal adoption application!!!!

I have been working on our adoption book all night and it's WAY harder than I would have thought.  I finally settled on a photobook company.  I'm going with Shutterfly because everyone on Facebook highly recommended them.  You gotta love FB for its instant responses to the tough questions in life like "Which is better Shutterfly or Snapfish?".  So then I went through all 203odd themes on the Shutterfly website.  I finally settled on Project Life:  Olive Edition.  Next I went through every picture Josh and I have taken since we started dating and a few more to describe our childhood, vacations, yada yada yada.  Now I'm working on picture placement and figuring out what type.  Whether to type it all first person or to type the stuff about Josh as third person is a very perplexing question.  So, too, is how to refer to the baby.  One side of the issue says to refer to the baby to be adopted as "theirs" (the birth parents) since they are the ones doing the choosing.  The other side says to refer to the baby as "ours" because you want the birth parents to know you will fully incorporate the child into your life and family (ie, they are no different in your eyes than a bio kid).

Decisions, decisions.  My guess is that I'll be working on this book for weeks and weeks on end.  Every decision seems Hugely important!  Like, what if I use "ours" and that turns the birth parents off and I don't get a baby?  Or what if they don't like the background of the book?  Is it too girly, too colorful, too something else?  I think I'll honestly have to pray over the book and not stressing over it so that the exact right family gets and reads it and feels comfortable with us.  That is what is really important for God to have His hand in it so that all parties are comfortable with the baby being where he/she is.