FED EX spells RELIEF

Well, today was the day. We officially mailed our Dossier today! As much as I thought I had everything together waiting for that one last document from New Orleans; I was sadly mistaken the more I looked things over. I had over looked a few things, misinterpreted a few instructions and just plain old messed a couple of things up. I'm making it sound a little worse than it actually is...I was able to correct everything in just 2 days. But it did leave me scurrying around a bit more than I had wanted to today. I feel pretty confident that all is well right now, we're just going to have to wait it out for a few days until I hear from Christi, our coordinator from America World.

I got very nervous earlier today when I handed my documents over to the clerk at the Secretary of State's office to be Apostilled. My hands were shaking and I had a hard time letting go. I can't put a finger on it; maybe it was just the finality of this stage in our lives...or a deep down fear that something might be wrong, or maybe just a fear of letting those papers out of my hands for the 10 minutes it took for her to process them. Regardless of why, I can promise you that I went through a broad spectrum of emotions today; excitement, pressure and tension, overwhelmed with tears at one point...but eventually total relief won out. I feel as though we'll be able to have our lives back now. I had no idea how much of my time this would consume. Now we'll be consumed with waiting and watching the pages of our calendar flip as time passes.

Anyway, just for the fun of it, I thought you guys might be interested in seeing the fruit of our labor. This is the plethora of paperwork, documents, home study report, psychological report, etc. This is what has taken me since February 20th-ish to complete. And, rest-assured, there are several of these stacks that are more than one document deep.

Aside from the stacks of paperwork, I've also included a picture of one of our photo pages. Aren't we cute?

I've really enjoyed this part of the process, but I'm glad to be leaving it behind and moving on to the next step. I will, no doubt, keep everyone posted on any progress from here. Aside from being officially logged-in, I can't imagine there will be much to communicate for quite some time. Which means that you'll have to be bored with hearing about "us" for a while...just good old family stuff while we wait.

Are we there yet? Is it May 2008 yet?

Just kidding! Have a great weekend!

Face for Grace