Counting down until active

I forgot to post last week as well and say that my beta was 31 as of last Monday (about 7 weeks after the miscarriage).  Thank goodness it is on its way down finally!  I need to go back tomorrow for another blood draw, and I am hoping, wishing, praying that I will be completely done at that point.  I was kind of hoping I'd just get my period before tomorrow and we could call it all square, but no such luck.  And I still shake my head in wonderment that I am wanting my period to come badly, and it is not because I'm anxious to start another cycle.  My, how we change.

T and I have about 5 pictures left to take today, and then we are done with everything we need to do before going active.  I talked to our chica at the agency, and she said, barring any issues, to plan on the first week or so of August.  Woo hoo!  Here is the lowdown on our text/online profile:

The picture portion:  
This is the point where my comments are very agency specific.  The home study is a little more generic, but every agency will have its own method on how to present you to potential birth moms.  Our agency works with you to create a profile of pictures and text that will be put online, as well as printed out to send to birth moms that "match" you based on your questionnaire.

We had to send 50-100 pictures in the following categories:

• 8-10 photos of you and your spouse, with children if applicable
• 8-10 close-up photos of just you and your spouse
• 2-5 photos of your home
• 2-5 photos of neighborhood (park, elementary school, gathering places, pool, etc)
• 2-4 photos of extended family/friends
• 8-10 holiday/vacation photos
• 8-10 photos of husband only doing his hobbies
• 8-10 photos of wife only doing her hobbies
• 4-10 hobby photos without people in them
• any other miscellaneous photos

Overwhelmed yet?  How many pictures do you have of you "doing your hobbies"?  Weird, right?  And the biggest kicker that pretty much disqualified all of our photos is that none can have alcohol in them.  Not that we are huge lushes, but there is normally a glass of wine or a beer in front of us if we're taking a picture while we are out.  No one whips out the camera on that special night that you're sitting with your chocolate milk in front of the fire place.  But special anniversary with wine shipped in from Napa?  Pictures abound.  This is the part that honestly has taken us forever.  

The text portion:

Then, to go along with the pictures, you have to write essays on the following:

• 150-250 words on your house/community
• 150-250 words on your extended family
• Then, they have a bunch of different categories for other essays (there were probably about 20 choices).  You write 6-9 of those, and then they choose 2-3 to put in your profile.  These are 100-250 words and we wrote about:
• Our pets
• Our life priorities
• Education we will provide
• What it means to be parents
• What we do in our leisure time
• Our religious beliefs
• Our children
• Qualities we love, admire and respect in each other
• How we will tell the child about his/her adoption
• Last is the "letter to the birthparents".  This is 500-700 words and just kind of wraps everything together.  

This part was so hard.  You have so much emotion and sincerity when writing them, but you worry if that is coming through correctly.  After awhile, everything seems so generic and forced.  We really thought long and hard about these, and I'm hoping our personality and commitment shines through in the end.  

I think once we are active, I'm going to take a week long nap.  This was exhausting!