May = simple; China = hard

I can now understand why people choose domestic over international adoption. Not that I am regretting our choice to adopt through China. I know that some day we will be so happy we went through all this and won't be able to imagine our life had we not done it. But, seriously, couldn't they make it simpler. Somehow?! I'm serious when I say that if people needed to do this to birth their own children, we woud solve over population problems for sure.

Our May baby adoption is basically done. This included two phone calls with our lawyer, a home study (which they took from our China adoption social worker! This saved us $2,000 to get this redone!), a check, and one signature from each of us. There will be a little more after the little guy joins us in nine weeks, but for the most part, we are done.

Last night JB and I spent two hours scouring our China adoption paperwork. Numerous times JB would just look at me and say, "Take a deep breath. We'll figure it out." There is just so much. I have, honestly, done a lot of it myself. JB works every day so I have communicated with our family coordinator, Leah, asked the questions, and followed the steps, as best I could. But last night, since JB got home at a decent time, I asked him if we could please sit down and look through it all together. I was reaching a panic point.

I had reached a point that I no longer felt able to do it myself. I have a box of hundreds of sheets of paper, instructions, and guidelines. Everything is blending together. Part of the issue is that we have documents coming from four different states. Kentucky and North Carolina require different steps than Minnesota and Florida. (I was born in Florida, JB in North Carolina. We were married in Kentucky, but I work in Minnesota.) Some states require county certification. Some don't. I am now concerned that I did the wrong thing sending our marriage certificate to the state of Kentucky for authentication as it now appears it actually needed county certification first -- something that no other state requires.

JB took a bunch of forms in to work today to be notarized. Thank goodness for Jane in his office who is a notary and for my little copy/fax/scan machine. Both of these have saved us unmeasurable amounts of times and money. I also sent some of these documents to be apostilled. Or is it "sent to the apostille?" (I don't know.) Then I read in the intstructions they should not be apostilled. What? Seriously, I feel like I am spinning in circles with all of it.

I know we are in the home-stretch. We almost have all of this done. After nearly nine months of scrambling, we are almost done. Keep pushing. I just want to make sure we get it all done correctly, and it seems so overwhelming. But we'll get through it.

Oh, and we need to go get passport photos too. Not for our passport. Just to include in our packet. Of course, they say we'll have to get them redone before we travel to China. JB's passport may also expire by the time we go. We'll have to do that then too.

One thing that we did get done successfully last night. We gathered our photos for our "photo page." We still need to take one of the outside of our house, but here are our two "formal" photos (which show both of our faces clearly and appear "posed"), two of our candids (which show how "fun" we are), and one of the inside of our house. Every little thing that we get accomplished feels good!

Candid #1 (Thanks for taking this Cali Tara)

Candid #2 (Thanks to the complete stranger who took this one)

Formal #1 (I can't remember who took this one -- but thanks!)

Formal #2 (Thanks Rachel!)

Our home (Thanks me!)

If you think of it, just add my stress to your prayer list. I have begun having a bit of difficulty sleeping again. I am falling asleep fine, but when I wake up (which happened last night at 11:30pm when someone tried to send us a fax!?) I have trouble going back to sleep. I feel that all of this on my mind is adding to that. Oh, and don't forget little Sarah who is having surgery today as well. Thanks everyone!

Also, happy birthday to my cousin Jason's wife Kathleen!!!! I think she is 25! :)