Positive!!!

YAY!! We officially signed with Adoption Support Center yesterday! But I need to back up to the beginning of the day, because, boy what a day it was!

Tuesday night we looked up the directions and figured out how early we would need to leave to make it to the adoption agency in the morning for our meeting. We knew we would need to leave by 7:30 to make it there by 9:00.
Well, imagine my surprise when we woke up Wednesday morning to our alarm beeping at 7:35. WHAT?! We should be in the car! And I am in serious need of a shower.
I jumped out of bed and hopped in the shower. We were dressed, fed the dogs, and on our way by 8:00. Pretty good for us.
Poor Sparky drove as fast has he *legally* (cough, cough) could. I called the agency a little before 9:00 to let them know we were going to be late. We were only about 20 minutes late, not bad....considering.

Le took our picture and lead us through the house the agency is in, to the back where there is another small building. They had chairs set up and a video was playing. Le said we didn't miss much.
Well, the video was about all the different adoption choices. International adoption versus domestic adoption. When choosing domestic adoption the difference between using an agency, a facilitator, an adoption lawyer, or doing a private adoption. I have been researching for the past 5 months, I knew all of this. If I hadn't already decided on domestic newborn adoption and submitted the application to the Adoption Support Center, I wouldn't have been there. It seemed backward to me. Why did we have to be approved to work with them before watching the informational video?
Poor Sparky, he has been letting me do what I do best and do all the research. He was on information overload. He had images of Guatemala and pictures of $35,000 checks swirling in his head.
So when I turned to him at the end and said, "Ok, ready to sign?" He got his big eyes and told me he would like to take the paperwork home and look at it first, if that was okay.
I said, "No, that's not okay. But let's go." Obviously you cannot make your spouse sign up for this before they are ready. I just thought he was ready.
After crying in the car to let him know he ruined my plans, Sparky informed me that he had no idea I planned on signing with them. He just thought we were going to a meeting.
Uh, no. Read the blog.
We went and had lunch at Noodles while I filled him in on how the domestic adoption process works. He said he was on board and what I said made sense. He was just royally confused when the presentation started talking about the large sums of money, options for domestic, and everything with international adoption. He just didn't know the process or that we were signing anything today.
He was more than happy to take me back to the agency and to sign up. 
Well, technically we didn't "sign" anything at all. Unless you count the receipt I signed after I paid the registration fee. We then scheduled the date for our Office Interview (next Wednesday!) to begin our Home Study process and the date for our Home Study class (January 14).
Now now here is my list of things I need to do:
Fill out Registration Form
Go to the Office Interview (22nd)
Sign the Pre-Placement Agreement
Get 3 Referral Letters from non-family members
Get FBI Background checks for Sparky and I
Attend the Home Study Class (Jan. 14)
Get copies of Sparky and my birth certificate
Make a copy of our marriage certificate
Make copies of our driver's licences
Make a copy of the dogs' vet shot records
Get National & State Background Checks through L-1 Enrollment (I think this is the same as the FBI background check, but I may be wrong)
Get local police and sheriff records for Indiana in every county in which we have lived in the past 5 years.
Physicals for both of us (mine is scheduled for Monday)
TB testing
Fill out the Certificate of Financial Status
Make a copy of 1040 tax form from last year
Obtain recent check stubs for each of us
Fill out Family History (4 pages)
Fill out all Blue papers (biography information, Infertility history, health history, description of children we will consider, residential information, financial information, adoptive family medical background, physical examination papers for the doctor to fill out, criminal history checks, medical conditions for birth mother and/or infant we will accept, chemical dependency we will accept, adoption openness agreement, advertising placement questionnaire)
Write our Dear Birth-mother letter
Find 20 couple pictures*, 10-12 of us together and several of us separate at our job or doing a hobby
8-10 pictures of the outside of our home, 4 must be full frontal views
8-12 photos of pets
20 pictures with wife's family in an activity with us*
20 pictures of husband's family in activity with us*
10-15 photos of us with friends and kids*
15-20 photos of us on vacations*, doing hobbies, participating in sports, holidays, traditions, family gatherings

*All photos with us need to have us smiling, clear faces, be recent, and not professionally taken.
Since I have put nearly all pictures of us on this blog, anyone who has read for a while could probably tell you we don't have very many pictures of us together. Looks like I will be bribing friends and family to take pictures of us all around town!
Also, my house is really ugly from the outside. I am not really looking forward to taking pictures of my ugly yellow house with dead plants and lots of snow in the middle of winter--ug.
As you can see I have a lot of work to do. I need to go get busy!!