One Giant Leap for Mankind ;)

Okay, it's not that significant, but it feels very big that we FINALLY got to start our dossier yesterday and after lots of running around today to fix a couple of our documents, we mailed off all but one of the papers!!  What we learned the last two days is that every single detail on this paperwork must be just right.  Nothing omitted, nothing scratched out, no wrong dates, etc.  We had multiple issues with these little matters and are currently waiting for Matt's doctor to fix his form for the second time, but by and large, we've got almost everything done.  What's next is that our agency will start to send the papers to government agencies to be "authenticated" and then when everything is done, it goes to China to be logged into their system and translated.  I am not having a huge sigh of relief yet.  Still feel like there could be bumps in the road.  But it is great to end this past two months of waiting and doing nothing and to be officially on the dossier step!

Now what I was kind of nervous about getting done first thing this morning was walking into the office in Raleigh where we get our fingerprints done for Homeland Security.  They send you an appointment time but friends said you can go any time, so I wanted to get it done ASAP, as the form they are tied to tends to take awhile to get approved.  I had to wake the kids up early so we could get there first thing and it's a little bit of a drive with morning traffic, so the whole time I'm just praying and hoping it's not all for nothing.  There was a line when we got there and the check in clerk was pretty non nonsense, so I was prepared for her to say we needed to come back next week, but it ended up being a total breeze and took mere minutes!

I'm learning this is definitely a process of hurry up and wait!  Now that we have rushed to get everything fedex'd away, there won't be anything to do for the next month or two.  I've still been sending of grant applications, but we've not gotten an acceptances and some we need to wait till we are matched anyway.  I'm really not sure we'll get any grants, which is a bummer, but I decided recently to go another route and have a craft fair at my house to raise money.

I have been crocheting scarves and painting signs like crazy the last couple weeks and plan to keep it up the rest of the summer, having the sale once we are matched--hopefully September or October?!

It's fun to paint again, though it makes me not want to do anything else and keeps a huge mess out on our table.  Hoping it's going to be worth it!!  Now I'm off to paint again...