More Hurdles Jumped!

Two Sundays ago (October 21st), at about 9:30 in the morning, I got a call from our placing agency.  I have never spoken with them on the phone.  All of our corresponding has been via email.  It kind of freaked me out, and rightly so!  She told me that although our dossier was on its way, two pages were missing!  One of them was my mistake, and one of them was the agency's mistake.  Regardless, we needed to get copies from our social worker notarized, apostilled, and Fed Ex'd ASAP!!  There is a treaty agreement between the US and Meg's country going into effect November 1st.  That means all dossier's submitted by October 31st are exempt from this new treaty.  Who knows what hoops and delays the new treaty will bring.  I, for one, really didn't want to find out!  Our agency told me that our in-country facilitator had about 40 hours of translating to do, and our first dossier hadn't even arrived yet.  Basically, we needed to have these papers on their way days ago.  We needed a miracle. 

I emailed our amazing social worker (seriously, I can't say enough good things about this guy.  If you are ever in need of a home study, I can point you in the right direction!!) on Sunday telling him of the papers we needed notarized.  Monday morning he told me he was about an hour away from my house for the day, but he had the papers and could have them notarized.  What choice did I have?  I made the two hour round trip drive and got the papers!  I needed to get one of them notarized with a true and correct statement since I'm not the one that signed the paper, so that was another long stop with a notary at Quin's office.  I rushed to the state capital once again and was hoping for a same day apostille.  I arrived at 4:10 and the deadline for same day is 4:00.  They weren't budging on that deadline despite my begging, so I had to settle for next day.  It was ready by 8:00 am the next day, which was Tuesday, October 23rd, and Quin picked it up on his way to work.  Both documents were Fed Ex'd that day to our agency's office, which happens to be in Maryland.  It arrived in Maryland on Wednesday morning (I know because we got the Fed Ex notification), and that's the last I heard. I emailed my agency asking if they could possibly get it same-day apostilled and Fed Ex'd, or what the process would be, but I didn't hear back.  I know they were all gearing up for hurricane Sandy to make her appearance, and all we could do was pray it got Fed Ex'd out of there before the storm hit!  I did email a copy of the two documents that were missing to our agency in hopes that she would forward them on to the Russian facilitator so she could translate them while she waited for the actual documents to arrive, but I didn't even hear back on that.  Seriously, I don't even know if our agency had power at that point.  They are near DC and I know they were in the path of the storm.  Although we kept praying, I had my doubts that our dossier would be registered by the 1st. 

We were out trick-or-treating as a family on Halloween when I got this email, which was forwarded by our agency from our Russian facilitator, "The Stephens are registered in the Ministry today. Oksana."  I started crying tears of joy right there in the moonlight!  Hallelujah!  I could not believe it! 

Just one more miracle to add to our story.

The Ministry of Education (sounds like a Harry Potter term to me!) has ten days to request more information or paperwork.  If we don't hear back, I guess that means we're in the clear and should receive our travel dates fairly soon!  Can you believe it!?  I can't!  The time is coming, and I'm so excited I can't even contain myself!  Of course I'll post the minute I hear, so stay tuned!

Once again, thank you for your support!!!  We could NEVER do this without all the wonderful people in our lives!  Those we've met, and those we've yet to meet.  We love you all!