Here a Form, There a Form, Everywhere a Form, Form!!

Oh my God!  How many times can two individuals fill out their address or sign their names?  Jon said that if we open our own adoption agency someday, we should figure out a way to auto-populate repeat information onto multiple forms (name, address, phone number, etc.).  I think he may be on to something here! 

Jon and I have been deluged in forms from both our adoption agency and our home study agency.  Our kitchen table, which comfortably seats 6, now uncomfortably seats stacks and stacks of folders, forms, and miscellaneous papers.  If I think about it long enough, I feel completely and utterly overwhelmed and unprepared.  But then I let "Organizational Keith" step in and come to the rescue.  Even though Jon rarely enjoys seeing "Organizational Keith" because it usually indicates he will be asked to help reorganize a closet, help alphabetize our spices, or help clean our cleaning supplies, I think even he was happy to see "Organizational Keith."  We needed someone to make order out of all of the paperwork chaos!  Thank God for sticky notes and paperclips.  And thank God that while I can organize like a son of a gun, Jon is better at translating what some of the questions actually mean versus what I think they mean.  We make a great team in that regard!

I would roughly estimate we have 75 pages of forms and paperwork to fill out and gather.  Some self-explanatory, but also some things I never imagined we would need:

• Autobiographies
• Doctor's Physical & Clearance
• Police Clearance
• Fingerprint Samples
• Family Disaster Plan (in case our house catches fire, gets picked up in a tornado, etc.)
• In-Depth House/Neighborhood/Family Description Forms
• Criminal and Credit Background Checks
• 8 Reference letters (5 for one agency, 3 for the other)
• A Budget (on each agency's individual forms)
• Applications/Intake Forms
• Policies/Practices/Procedure Documents
• On and on and on and on and on.........

We aim at completing a few forms a week as to not make ourselves crazy, but some (like the budget) are harder than others because they require you to "estimate" baby costs.  When  you don't have a baby and have never had a baby, estimating baby costs seems like an impossible task.  We could ask our moms I guess, but something tells me the cost of baby food and diapers has gone up since the 70's. 

We continue to plug away and hope to be finished with our forms packets for both agencies by the end of August. 

It is always good to have a goal I guess.....