As many of you know we are officially home study approved! At times I got discouraged; between work, the gym and quality time I wasn't sure if we'd get through everything before the summer ended but we did it! Self-matching is our priority, that means we connect with an expectant mom outside of an agency because we don't like the fact that agencies are asking for tens of thousands of dollars upfront before you even get accepted to the agency, there is no guarantee of placement and is almost all cases any fees paid are nonrefundable. The agency or attorney pockets most of the fees and the mom gets a small percent for her expenses. The agency we are with is small and only placed 10 babies last year so we need to do out due diligence to make sure we're getting more exposure to expectant moms.

We would love to adopt in Florida since we live here and due to the  Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC) process if we adopt out of state we're open to California, Texas and Ohio because we have family there. After a child is born you have to wait until the ICPC paperwork has been filed an approved before you can legally leave the state with the child and the process can take days to weeks depending on the state.  Due to the adoption advertising laws in Florida we are limited in ways we can tell people about our intentions to adopt. So we need your help to spread the word!

We've put together a giveaway of sorts for helping us share our info. I read Life Changing Manga of Tidying Up which is the comic book version of the main book. It's like the Cliff Notes version. Anywho, after reading it I started going through stuff to clear out space before we get placed and found a lot of things that are new or only used once that would be better loved with others so you fine folks will be able to claim some of these items.

Here's how the giveaway will work:

1. Share this blog post on your Facebook or Twitter.
2. Comment the link to the post in the comment section so we can see it.
3. Pick something from this gallery that you'd like to have, if you don't want anything and just wanted to share then you don't worry about picking.
4. A winner will be picked every week and new items will be added. 

Thanks in advance to everyone that shares our blog post. We are so excited for the chance to become parents.