Yes, I drove to Topeka last Thursday. Andddd, I drove back again today. The Secretary of State’s Office, where I go for the apostilles, made a mistake. One of those “how-could-this-happen”, “I-didn’t-even-think-this-was-possible” mistakes. Not a huge deal. Just three more days and another trip to Topeka.

I hope our dossier is mistake free now. I hope I don’t have to go back to Topeka.

I have done my part, for now. Aaron has to fax it tomorrow to get our approval to mail it.

I think I might have to drive to Topeka tomorrow. Which would not be so exciting…. EXCEPT that it means that our dossier is done! And I’d be going over there to get everything apostilled.

Aaron’s employment letter finally came, so now we hopefully have all of the papers that we’ll need.

We just have to fax our entire dossier to have it checked, and if it’s good, we hand it over to FedEx.

This would put us right on track for a November travel date, like we’ve been hoping!

We’re almost done. Paper chasing, that is.  I will feel tremendously relieved when our dossier is on its way to Eastern Europe. Our 171-H was NOT mailed yesterday. Because, we got it yesterday!!! Aaron was home from work a bit early, so we immediately headed over to our favorite notary. But, she was out on vacation. Big let down. And, it was 5:30, so no chance of going to the bank.

But, he came home a bit early again today, so we could go to the bank and get this document notarized. I get so nervous that they’ll make a mistake and we’ll have to do it all over again. But nope, everything was perfect. It did not take long. A huge relief.

We are still waiting on Aaron’s employment letter. This is maybe the third time we’ve had it done? 4th? 5th? Not sure. I hope it will come tomorrow. We need to fax these new documents to someone to check them before we have them apostilled. Then we need to fax ALL of our documents to be checked. Then we mail them.

We are slowly acquiring more things for Reed and Scarlett. Their room is slowly coming together. Last weekend we got their car seats, thanks to a lovely friend who gave us an old car seat for the Babies R Us Trade-in. Somehow I doubt that anyone will ever confuse whose is whose…

I probably shouldn’t talk all in adoption-speak for you lovely people who read my blog who have never adopted internationally. US Immigration requires that you get pre-approved to bring orphans into the US. You file an application, the I-600A, go into to get your biometrics (fingerprints) done and then you hopefully get the 171-H in the mail. It seems like a lot of people get this piece of paper pretty quickly. Like a week or two after they get their fingerprints done. But, there are some people who get requests for more information or their fingerprints weren’t good enough and it is drawn out for months. I was afraid that would be us. I am just so excited that this is coming!

We still need a perfect employment letter from Aaron’s company. Which should be here any day now.

And I think I will need to get a couple more copies of our marriage license. Then, we’re done.

Then our dossier will be in the mail to Reed and Scarlett’s country. I am so excited!