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Sunday, January 22, 2012

To update everyone - my documents left Washington DC last week and made their way to my adoption agency in Florida.  A copy of my paperwork had already been sent so my originals are en route (if not already there!) to Ethiopia.

The next step is to just to wait.  The Director of the adoption agency told me that they haven't received a referral (a child that is available for adoption with picture) in awhile so it could be about 4 months until we get our referral.

So in the meantime I'll be finding things to keep me busy.  I've been working on a few craft projects but one of the things I'm most proud about is the collection of shoes I have gathered.  You may have read a few posts earlier that I was moved by a book called "Kisses from Katie" in regards to children in Africa and the consequences of their lack of shoes.

The daycare that our son goes to graciously offered to collect shoes and socks as their end of the year project.  I also informed my mom back in Iowa about what they were doing and she joined in.  I also visited our local goodwill and bought all the childrens shoes that were half price, making them about $1 per pair.

I lined them up tonight just to see how many we had collected and I counted 41 pairs!  I didn't count the socks but there was a small box full, plus a package of brand new socks someone had donated at the daycare.  I was so moved by everyones generousity and can't wait to take pictures when we deliver the shoes.  I had considered mailing the box but I think it will be considerably cheaper to take them with us as a carryon.  I imagine the box of shoes to ship would be several hundred dollars.

Here's some pictures of the shoes and socks we have gathered! 



Tuesday, January 10, 2012

I'm sure after reading this post you might think I'm crazy but the FedEx guy just left our office and my heart is beating a mile a minute!  It's been a good 9-10 months I've been working on our adoption documents.  I've had to order several reports, go around town to get certain things signed and notarized.  I've had to do several documents over because they weren't signed correctly, notarized wrong or someone used white out on their mistake and adoption documents can't have ANY WHITE OUTS!

Needless to say, here are all my documents (about 40 sheets of paper) bundled neatly inside this Fedex package.  These puppies are headed to Washington DC to get seals from the US Dept of State and the Ethiopian Embassy.


After all the seals are applied the courier will send my documents to my adoption agency.  Then the final documents will be mailed on to Ethiopia.  I sent 2 copies of these 40 pages to the adoption agency already and those are being sent to Ethiopia to begin the translation phase. 

As far as I know we are still #2 on the wait list and our adoption agency Director just got back from a recent trip to Ethiopia.  Also, the lady who did my homestudy, Kelly Stewart (http://www.kellystewart.org/) just passed court and is traveling to Ethiopia right now to pick up her sweet son, Judson!!

You can bet I made my FedEx guy well aware that he was holding my most prized possession in his hands.  When I handed them over to him he sort of chuckled and asked if I was ok with handing them over.  I'm glad to have them out of my hands and on to the next step...but you can also bet that I followed him out the door and watched him drive away.  (Not before I snapped this photo of his truck...just in case my docs get lost) HA HA


Wednesday, January 4, 2012

We had our fingerprinting appointment yesterday in Nashville at 8am - therefore, we had to get up EARLY!  Here's proof, it was still really dark (and yes, I was speeding!)



I was thankful that the fingerprinting place wasn't downtown because we were running a bit late and downtown can be a bit confusing to navigate if you aren't familiar with the one ways.  So we only arrive about 10 min late and thankfully it was no problem.  We were both in and out in no time.  No pictures were allowed inside and Tommy wouldn't pose in front of the door so here we go:



Then we headed downtown to get our State Seals on our paperwork.  Everything has to be verified at different levels and the person who verified it needs to be verified.  You follow?  lol  Needless to say we took a few wrong turns and went around a few blocks and were finally on the right path when look what we encountered:



A stalled city bus, right in our way.  Once again we had to go around the block to get to the other side, GRRR!


There she is, Snodgrass tower!



Sixth Floor notary division...here I come!



A super nice lady named Jamie helped me out.  I thought she'd think I was weird to ask for her picture so I took a picture of her desk while she was off getting my seals. 

It felt AWESOME to get one more thing checked off our list.  I'm gearing up this week to now send these documents to Washington DC.  A courier service called Assistant Stork will receive our documents and walk them into the capital to get "verified" and then she'll walk them over to the Ethiopian Embassy in Washington to get them "verified" there as well.  Then all our documents will get sent to our adoption agency to be mailed off to Ethiopia.