What a Week!!!!

Wow…what a week!  If you recall, our Favorable Determination Letter came in the mail last Thursday, so the countdown was on to get all of our documents state certified and sent to our agency.  On Monday, I headed to Jackson to take them to the Secretary of State’s office to have them certified.  A sweet lady in our church, Mrs. Laura, kept the girls, which was a HUGE help! 

I got to Jackson right at lunchtime and was able to meet three dear friends for lunch.  Mandi is one of my dearest friends from college, and I was so excited to see her (even if for just an hour).  When I pulled up to the restaurant, she said, “Who would have thought ten years ago that we would be meeting for lunch driving our minivans!!”  Tamah is my sweet friend that I dearly miss in Jackson.  We talk almost daily, and I was so excited to get to meet her newest, precious addition, Amelia!  Alison is my friend that I have met through this crazy adoption world.  She is one of the first people I emailed about adoption, and she has ben SO encouraging and supportive.  I was so thrilled to get to eat with these sweet girls!  We had so much fun visiting…it was just much too short!

After eating lunch, I found my way to the Secretary of State’s office.  Before I went in, I just prayed that everything would go smoothly.  It took a little while because I had 23 documents to be certified. Each document had it’s own page that had to be attached to it certifying that the notary was a true notary in the state of MS.  When everything had been certified, I looked through all of my documents and compared it to my “dossier checklist”. While doing this, I realized there was one document missing.  Panic set in…big time!  I realized that I didn’t have a document that I needed from our homestudy agency.  I was SO upset…I did shed a few tears, just out of pure frustration.  I was ready to be done and get our dossier in the mail!  (I’ll finish this part of the story later)…

After leaving the SOS office, I went to visit my sister-in-law, Mary Jennifer, and our nephew, Luke.  I couldn’t believe how much he has changed and grown since we saw him eight weeks ago!!  He is such a little chunk.  He let me hold him the whole time and even feed him a bottle…he was so sweet!!

After I left Mary Jennifer’s I went to Tamah’s house so I could get my hands on Amelia for a little while.  She is OH SO SWEET!!  She just let me hold her while she snoozed!  I was still a little panicked and upset about the whole dossier shenanigan, but holding these two sweet babies made me feel so much better!

So, here is where the dossier story continues….  On Monday, I called Marcus, our wonderful social worker who did our homestudy, and told him about the document I was missing.  He promised to do it on Tuesday and overnight it to me so I would have it Wednesday morning.  Being the head strong person that I am, I decided that I would drive BACK to Jackson on Wednesday to get that ONE last document certified.  My main reason for this is that our agency send dossiers to Washington, DC, each Thursday.  On Fridays they have a courier in DC that takes them to the Ethiopian Embassy where they are authenticated then sent back to our agency.  It is at this time that we will be on the “official” waiting list!  I was DETERMINED to have our dossier to our agency by Thursday!  So, we got up on Wednesday, got ready to go, and waited on UPS to come and deliver the letter that we needed!  I took the girls with me this time, and they were great.  I definitely found out that traveling with a portable DVD player and a Miss Patty Cake DVD makes Selah enjoy car rides much more than normal!  Myla was ready to go with all of her bags packed.  She LOVES to pack a bag!

Don’t they look thrilled about the trip?  HA!

Besides my children, this was the most important thing in my possession yesterday….my “dossier” folder that contained all of our documents.  I’ve been so protective of this folder for the past several months.  I am NOT an organized person by any means, and I was so paranoid I was going to lose something very important, but I managed to keep it all together in this folder!

We stopped for lunch with Aunt Mary at Chick-Fil-A!  The girls loved getting to play on the playground after being cooped up in the car!

Aunt Mary and Myla.  Baby Luke stayed at home with Uncle Spencer, so we didn’t get to see him.  But, we will be seeing them this weekend! 

Selah loved the playground.  Notice the huge ketchup stains on her outfit.  She somehow managed to squeeze open a ketchup packet and get it everywhere!

After lunch, it was finally time to get down to business!!!  We went back to the Secretary of State’s office to get our one LAST document certified! 

This is Myla with Mrs. Nan.  She is the lady that does all of the “certifying”!  She thought I was crazy when I asked to take her picture! 

Here they are again the receptionist (I think her name was Debbie…I feel bad for not asking).  She helped me so much on Monday by looking up all of the different notaries that we had.  It’s neat how so many people go into making an adoption happen!!

Then, it was FINALLY time to go to the UPS and get sent away forever and always to our agency!  It was a very scary feeling handing over our dossier to the lady at the store.  I know she thought I was nuts.  I recounted the documents three times, made her double check the address twice, then asked her to take our picture!  She kept saying, “Hon, you need to calm down.  Everything is going to be just fine." Ha!  I wanted to say, “This is not just some random package! It’s the last six months of my life, and I would die if something happened to it!!!”  Well, not to worry!  It has been safely delivered to our agency, and now I’m just waiting to hear that everything is okay.  Hopefully it will be sent to DC today!