I do declare...

After several weeks of not doing much for the adoption aside from waiting for my fingerprints to be officially rejected, the past few days have been busy! I called CHI about whether they could recommend a notary in Seattle who might be familiar with adoption paperwork. Mike, the Ethiopia program assistant, said that if I didn't mind making the trip up, they could do it for free! The CHI office is in Ferndale, WA which is about an hour and a half drive north of Seattle, but only about 10 minutes south of my parents' cabin. This was great news since I needed to make two copies of my dossier into "certified copies" by having each photocopied document notarized which seems to be confusing to the notaries I talked to and would be quite expensive. This was on Tuesday and Beck was already at preschool. So I packed up some overnight bags, picked up Beck, and we headed up to the cabin where my parents happened to be this week. I spent about an hour that night at a "business park" (really just a copy machine in a mailing center) and made 200 copies total - four copies each of the original documents in the dossier. And then today I drove to Ferndale and spent about 3 hours getting two sets of the photocopies notarized. Each document required that I hand write the statement, "I do declare that this is a true and correct copy of an original document." and then I signed it. And then the notary did her thing and stamped each one. I haven't done that much handwriting in a very long time and my hand is aching now in protest!

I was curious about the actual office and was impressed. Everyone was extremely helpful and friendly, organized, and professional. I am so grateful that they were willing to help us out like this! It was a whirlwind of a trip since we left after lunch today, but I feel like I got a lot accomplished! Here are a few photos of the building.

One funny thing did happen last night at the cabin. Beck came running out of the bedroom yelling, "Mama, Mama, Yogi took off his diaper!" I marched into the room to remedy the situation and found Yogi with one little hand on his hip, the diaper swinging from his other hand. He fluttered his eyes haughtily at me and announced, "I don't NEED this!" Of course, based on recent experience, he really DOES still need it, so I reached for him and he dove into the plump comforter, little white bum flashing amidst the folds of fabric. I did finally get ahold of him, but I swear, changing a toddler who isn't interested is like trying to put a diaper on a bucking calf at a rodeo. It's not easy!

Ok, I promise that after we're finished with all the paperwork, these posts will be a lot more interesting! It can only get better after an entire post on government form I-171H, right?!