A whirlwind of activity

After really buckling down the last few days, things are progressing. Here's what I've accomplished:

1. I found a contract social worker to do an independent homestudy. She is an angel and can expedite it and have it done in two weeks. She's coming over on Sunday to meet us. She only charges $600 and I checked her license with the state. She can also do our post-placement visits for $60 each. She also doesn't charge to update our homestudy if we want to adopt a second child.
2. I spent yesterday writing a Dear Birth Mother letter, buying scrapbook software, and several hours putting together a profile. Today I went to Kinkos, printed it out and had it bound. A copy is enroute to California for delivery tomorrow for the birth mother there. I'm also having my facilitator review it for future matches if this one doesn't work out.
3. We figured out the best way to finance the adoption, by taking a loan against David's 401K. We can borrow up to $35K if we need that much.

So, things are progressing. I have to get a registration form from the agency in CA and pay them a nominal fee ($200) to process my profile and get it to the birth mother. I get shown to 4 birth mothers for this fee, so if this one doesn't work out, she had a lot of other babies due in March and April. I called them to get the information and am waiting on them to call me back.

And speaking of phone calls - you don't get better service from HSM if you're a private customer. I spoke to them on Tuesday, she was supposed to call me back yesterday and didn't. I left a message this morning and still haven't heard from her. She's only managing like 20 families, how hard can it be to return a phone call?