We aren't criminals :-)

I thought that the wait for the fingerprint check was gonna drive me crazy. It wasn't so bad though. The first place the prints had to go, Virginia, only took about a week to get clearance. Next, they had to send them to the ABI. The people in Virginia said that there was a delay in the ABI getting the prints because they had changed their system. Its always nice to have connections and we were lucky enough to have one. Jarrod teaches with a lady who's husband is in the ABI. Her husband also happens to be friends with the head of fingerprints... He said that usually adoptions are put at the bottom of the stack, but ours were processed in just a few days! The whole processed that we were told was averaging 12 weeks, ended up only taking about 4 and a half weeks! The DHR background check that we were told was behind 2 months, ended up only taking a few weeks. We received the results and..... we aren't criminals! YAY! ha ha. We are so thankful that it did not take a long time- we are ready to be eligible to be shown to birthmothers! There aren't any ready to view lifebooks now, but any day there could be someone who waits to make the final decision on what they want to do at the end of their pregnancy or even after the birth. That sounds..... I don't know what word to use.... heartless? hard to do? There could be a number of circumstances that make the mother have make that tough decision to give their baby a better life.
I have so much respect for birtmothers. They give their baby a chance to live and have a good life as opposed to taking their life before they are born or giving them a life of poverty, etc.

 I am so rambling, but I have one more thing to mention. The same weekend that I blogged about trying to find the cheapest route I decided to stay with the book I was already creating on Mixbook.com. They were running a Valentines special and I got 30% off. I sent 20 copies straight to the agency, but I had to have one myself so I sent one to our house as well. It came in the day after the super bowl. I'm proud of it- I think it looks great. We saw lots of examples of other couples lifebooks when we went to the meeting in Georgia and ours (in mine and Jarrods opinions) looked better... Mixbook is awesome. Also, an old friend told me about groupon.com and I was able to buy an awesome coupon from mixbook, so now I can order more books. Thank you Meredith!! I obviously can't post pictures of all of the book, but I took a few pics of some of the cover and some pages. I wish I could show you all of the pages!! I don't know if I said before, but the lifebook is what is shown to birthmothers for them to pick the parents. It contains a letter to the birthmother, a letter about Jarrod from me and about me from Jarrod, lots of pictures of family, pics from our vacations, pictures of our fur babies, our house, and descriptions of ourselves, our background, the town we live in, and why we want to adopt.