So Stinkin' Close....

See this big binder?

Well we have a bit of a love-hate relationship.

Soon, we won't have to use this binder any more.

Because we are so - so - SO close to sending out our dossier.  SO close.

Today, a dear, sweet friend - Jill B. (Elijah & Jonathan's Mama!) spent 5 hours in the car...for us.

I still can't believe it!

Let me start at the beginning.

Last night, after talking to someone who knows way more about this process than we do, we realized that it would be maybe slightly possible for us to send out our dossier before we leave for vacation on Saturday.

So we had to decide whether we would just wait a bit longer until after we got home from vacation, or try to squeeze it all in before we left.

We opted to squeeze.

The first step was to get .one.last.document. notarized.  On Sunday night.  At 7:00pm.

Almost seems impossible.  But - someone who works at the church that I work for is a notary.  And we somehow managed to get a hold of her.  And she happened to be at church - with her stamp.

Then, we called Jill B. - and I think we said something like "okay...are you SURE you want to drive all the way to Madison tomorrow...just for us?!".  She didn't even hesitate!  "Yep - I'll be glad to do it - it'll be fun!".  Okay, then!

After that last document was notarized, and we knew Jill would run to Madison, we booked it home to get all of our documents ready to be apostilled.  If you've never done this...it's a huge job!  There is a different form that needs to be filled out for each different notary.  Some people use the same notary for all their documents (that lady at the bank, or that friend from church) - but we used whoever was available when we had a document to be notarized.  Which means lots of apostille sheets.  It's really a bit of a pain.  But in about 2 hours, we got it done!  And we worked as a team...without arguing...believe it or not :)

Then we made the 20 minute drive to Jill's house to drop off all of our documents.  All of our hard work - sweat - tears...are in that little brown envelope.  It's crazy to think that's what we've been working so hard on.  Just that little stack of paper.  Well - it's not that little.  33 documents, to be exact.

We got home around 10:00pm - and totally crashed.

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Now it's time to pray.  Pray like crazy.  In order for us to send out our dossier before we leave for vacation, we need....

*Our documents to be ready for me to pick up by Friday
*Our golden ticket to be in our mailbox by Friday
*Our apostilling to be done perfectly - no errors on their part!!

Pray - friends!  We know this is totally possible!

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So what if the documents aren't ready by Friday?  What if the golden ticket isn't here in time?  What if the apostilling is all messed up?!

Well...that's just not going to happen.

But if it does...we just roll with it.  We've already come up with a plan a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h...and if we have to switch gears, then we will.

Either way - we're one big step closer.

One Thing I Know For Sure: Good bye, big blue binder!  Now - Pray!!!