Kinda Similar to a Sonogram...

Well, after exactly 60 days since beginning our dossier work, it is complete....or almost complete! The dossier is the group of documents needed to send the "Africa" government telling them we are who we say we are....it includes things such as letters from our bank, local police reports, medical reports and so on, so forth. We had gathered all of the forms needed except the I-171 .... that form is from US Homeland Security (following our fingerprints) stating we are cleared and approved to bring home an "orphan". Now, because it comes from the overwhelmed and quite possibly overworked government, it could take anywhere from 1 day to 10 weeks (I guess even more) to be returned to us. And our dossier wouldn't be complete without it!

For the past five weeks I have been putting Garrett down for his nap and then going directly to our office (which has a window that can see our mailbox) and putzing around while I wait for our mail lady to bring my most longed for piece of mail. And usually around 2-2:30. I have even learned to sit at the computer with my back to the window, able to hear the exact sounds of her squeaky tires stopping and then starting between our mailbox and the neighbors. Pitiful, I know. And, as luck would have it, Thursday was the day for our I-171 to arrive.....creating this lump of bricks to become my new best buddy:

The next morning Kenny, Garrett and I got up, headed down to our adoption agency to pick up the remaining documents they were responsible for and then headed out to Austin, Texas for authentication. We arrived in Austin around 2:30 p.m., found the Secretary of State's office where the kind lady "authenticated" (aka: verified that all of the notarized documents in our dossier were done by REAL notaries and put a oh-so-official looking form on top of each document we had gathered).

Garrett and myself at the Texas Secretary of State's office joyfully holding our newly authenticated documents. Okay, if I'm honest, I was joyful, Garrett was hot and tired!

After that was done, we made our way about two blocks over to the handy UPS store where we made a few more copies of the original documents, organized, ordered and separated documents as necessary. Let me just stop here and officially apologize to my husband. I was a wreck in the UPS store. It was loud. It was crowded. And I was obnoxiously obsessing over the documents. And snipping and biting his head off for even looking in my direction. I was just SO nervous I'd put them in the wrong order or forget to separate them in the correct piles or tell the UPS man the wrong address and some dear old lady in D.C. would get my dossier and all this hard work would be lost. I probably over-reacted a bit. Or a lot. So, babe, I'm so sorry.

Next I handed over our precious dossier package to the frazzled and um, let's just say, non-motivated store clerk. I asked him to please ship this to the Assistant Stork near Washington, D.C. (He did so but you better bet I was totally obsessive and checked the shipping labels 100 times before finally letting it go.) Said "stork" will do the remaining two steps of authenticating our dossier by hand delivering it all to the U.S. State Department and "Africa" Embassy. Once she does that (in a few days) she will ship the entire dossier back to our agency for review & adding of our picture books and passport pictures (and maybe even more - that's all I can remember).

I know the UPS worker thought we were crazy asking him to take our picture holding an envelope full of mail. And all while Garrett included some Austin leaves. But I promised him this was a very special package. And, in my mind, this picture is almost like the equivalent of a sonogram picture. I don't have the belly to prove it, but our little one is on his/her way to becoming a part of our family.

So, without too many glitches, our dossier could possibly on it's way to "Africa" by the end of next week/following week. And we're told it could take 7-8 days to travel over there!

What's next? We wait for the call from our agency stating we are invited to attend a "match meeting" or "referral" for/of a child. I don't think I've ever stated it here, but we have requested a child (single), under the age of two.

This is real. I keep telling myself that. This is really going to happen. I tear up each time a big step is completed on our adoption journey because it means that we are one step closer to this really happening. We're one step closer to bringing home a little person to become a part of our family.