I titled this blog Frustration because that is the best way to describe yesterday. It's really not anyone's fault, but John and I had reviewed all of our paperwork a week ago yesterday and decided that it was very do-able to mail our dossier off yesterday. We had some final paperwork to get done this week and then we would be able to get the last of our stuff notarized yesterday at the bank and mail it. Yeah! We were excited all week and finished typing some letters, got our police clearance done and asked our very accommodating friends to (yes, again) get their letters of reference re-notarized since the year time limit had passed. Have I mentioned that we have wonderful friends and family? We were all set and yesterday morning we got everything together and were double-checking our instructions for the dossier when we discovered that two of our forms for the dossier have to be certified.
Now for all of you who have not adopted internationally, getting something certified is when you go and get something notarized and then you have to send it in to the Secretary of State for the state it was notarized in so that he/she can certify that the notary was an actual notary in that state and not just someone off the street with a fake notary stamp. Whew. We actually did have this done for our birth certificates and marriage certificate, but didn't realize that we had to do it for these two forms as well. So, after some disappointment and a lot of stress (with two of us reading about 20 pages of instructions for this packet, it got overwhelming), we went to the bank where a very nice notary helped us with about 8 documents. We will mail the forms on Monday to be certified and when we get those back, we should finally be ready to mail it all in. Hopefully we've done everything else right!
Some people ask me why Angelina Jolie doesn't have to go through all the paperwork to adopt. My guess is that she does have to do the same paperwork that we do. Except for the fact that she is probably not the one doing it. She probably has hired someone really good at organizing to get it all done speedy quick. I'm trying to be content with the timing God has for us. John and I were talking last night and we are fully convinced that if we had gotten her earlier, it wouldn't have worked out as well. I might not have been able to stay home with her, or we might have bought a house that was too expensive that we'd be stuck in now, or it might just have been the wrong child. God is teaching us more than ever that we do not have control over this no matter how much we want to and that His timing is better than anything we could imagine. Still, I want to meet my little girl very soon, so please continue to pray that we would get the paperwork finished as soon as possible!
