Rachel, you are not losing your mind!

All right, so first of all, Rachel, you did not lose your mind. The blog did say Jacksonville. I had enough time to take it off this morning but didn't actually change the error. I was the one who was over-tired and confused. Gabbi is right. I did, in fact, drive to Tallahassee today to get ten documents from the state of Florida certified.

It seems that bumps on this journey to our daughter in China our inevitable. Today, I managed to swerve and miss a big one by the skin of my teeth. I went into the office, which turned out to be a lot less "governmental" than I had thought it might be. I didn't have to wait in line and the people were very nice -- not something that I have often found in government offices. The woman who looked at my paperwork, however, immediately crinkled her nose when she saw some of the documents. Never a very good sign. Then, another bad sign . . . she told me that our notary failed to include her "notary number" or something of the sort.

Needless to say, after a 2.5 hour drive, my stomach dropped. She said that my birth certificate, our police letters, and our home study, which were also notarized by someone other than Jane in JB's office at the hospital, were correct. However, the other six documents were not correctly notarized and could not be accepted.

At this point that I begin to feel like I might cry, and I think the lady could tell that I was feeling a bit nauseous. I told her that I drove 2.5 hours and that similar documents had been accepted by my agency when I sent them to our family coordinator to approve. She said, very nicely, that it didn't matter. She is actually certifying that the notary is legit. If she can't prove the notary is legit, she can't certify my documents.

"Is there anything I can do?" I ask. "Anything?"

She stood there for a moment and then said, "Well, we could re-notarize them here. If your agency will accept them."

"Does that cost anything?" (Not that it mattered. I think I might have paid anything at that point.)

She tells me that it is free.

In about two seconds, I was on the phone with America World, begging to speak directly to my family coordinator despite how busy I knew she was. They put me on hold for awhile, but I did get to speak directly to Leah. She said that China wants to see state certification. They don't care how we get state certification. If that means they need a second notary then so be it.

I get off the phone and tell the nice woman that this will work and she brings a notary in. Now this is where things just don't make sense to me. The two women then tell me to sign the back of each sheet and write down what the document is and then the new notary will notarize it. Since two of the documents were John's documents (his medical form and his employment letter), I am still confused how this was acceptable, but she assured me it was, and I left a half hour later with ten certification letters. PRAISE GOD!!!!

I also returned home to find our Kentucky marriage license in the our mailbox . . . certified. So all we are waiting for now is JB's North Carolina birth certificate, and we can send our dossier to our agency!

I'm also feeling a bit better, another answer to prayer. So life is moving ahead well. Scrubs finished his last agility class last night. JB came with me, and we filmed some of Scrubs' tricks. I'll post them later and you can all pretend to be interested, even if you aren't!

Our hope? To have our dossier in China by the end of next week! Keep praying!