Adoption Questions

We have 5 kids in our home and three of them (the middle three...FS age 5, FD age 4, FS age 3) are now available for us to adopt. We definately want to adopt them and are moving forward with that. My question is do any of you have any advice about things we need to do or not do. We have heard that we need to go in and copy off their state file and anything else we can get our hands on becuase they close up all that stuff until the kids are 21 once they are adopted. Are their pros or cons to going ahead with the adoption quickly or taking it slowly? We have had them in our home for 7 months. Also, do any of you have ideas of how to get pictures of the kids when they were little...anywhere we have not already tried...mom says she has none dad says "(*+@%# no he won't give us any pictures of the kids...they bleong to him) and the hospital only keeps them for three years...we were too late. Dawn