A Golden Seal Anniversary

Today is our 11th wedding anniversary! Jeff had today off to help get ready for our trip tomorrow and get our 1st set of documents for our Russian dossier ready to mail off. Then we found out that Emma didn't have school either because of all the snow that fell this weekend. So, Jeff spent the morning playing with the kids in the snow, while I focused on the documents.

It was a huge help, but because of a couple last minute changes, this took quite a bit longer than planned, and our fabulous friend, Dawn, came to the rescue. She came over with her daughter, Emma, and watched all the kids while we raced the 45 minute drive to our adoption agency. There we were able to get the last of our documents, and then get them all notarized. The last stop was to hurry to the Secretary of State's office (before they closed) to get the 29 documents appostilled. An appostille is basically an international procedure that tells the world the notary is valid. When they appostille a document, they affix the appostille certificate to the front of the notarized document with a beautiful golden seal. At least, it was beautiful to us after so much work to get everything ready. :)

Now the paperwork is all ready and we will drop it in the mail in the morning on the way to the airport. Yeah!!!!!

What better way to celebrate our 11 years of marriage than by taking the first official step to uniting our family with our new Russian daughter!

Blog Beginnings

Wow! It is midnight on the dot and I am still up getting stuff done... But I just have to stop and post my very first blog--ever! Okay, okay, I admit it, although I can create websites, even writing straight html code if needed or linking simple databases, I have never even read a blog!

That is, until my husband and I entered the world of international adoption. :)
It was there that I discovered the fact that people opened their personal diaries for the whole world to not only view, but actually comment on!

So, I thought, this could be fun! And what better way to chronicle this life-changing event.

Well, that's all you get tonight. In a few hours I will be up to feed our 6 month old son, Alex, and then a few hours after that I will be getting the girls ready and Emma off to school.