171h Makes an Appearance

It has three rings. Clowns. Ravenous, roaring animals. Death defying stunts. What is it?

A circus? No. It's my day! I'm the stuntman. I'll let you guess who the animals and clowns would be. Heh.

This morning we received our 171h, otherwise known around here as immigration approval! This just shy of a month after we sent in our application.

So, instead of cooking and preparing for a graduation party that takes place here tomorrow, I did one last paper chase. Adoption is a waiting game. And a hurry-up game. Actually, more like wait...wait...wait...hurry, hurry HURRY!!...ok, wait some more now! My goal for the day was to get the last few signatures and documents notarized and then make a quick drive up to Topeka to get our whole dossier apostilled.

This is the super condensed version of my day. The first person I needed to find was out of the office today. I was able to find this person by going to their home. Awkward, but necessary. Got it done.

The second person I arranged to meet at the salon! This person started to sign in black ink before I caught it! Oh no! So I drove home and printed another document, drove back to the salon, got the signature.

Well, something was wrong with the document. So this person stopped by our house to do it over again. Well, I couldn't find the matching blue pen that we needed! So we started over with a whole new document.

Later I found another problem with the document. I took a chance and ran over to the hardware store where this person had said they would be going. Have you ever felt like a stalker? I peeked down all the aisles at the hardware store, but didn't find the person. I glanced out the window and saw my target in the garden center. I helped this person carry flowers to the car and got my final signature of the day.

I visited the notary three times today, made photocopies of the whole dossier, and scanned the documents for approval. Phew! Done at 3pm.

Done too late.

I did not have time to drive to the capital to get the documents apostilled today. I'm so disappointed in myself. I should have had everything ready. If I had sent my dossier today instead of next Monday we might have been submitted a whole week earlier.

No use crying over it now. I have to make it through graduation weekend in one piece and just make the trip on Monday. I'll take the kids and we will make it fun, somehow.

It's good for me to have a day or two to flip through all the paperwork and double check everything, and put it all in order. That paper baby will be on it's way to Eastern Europe on Monday and we'll be entering another waiting phase of this journey.