The home stretch of the paper chase

As we were gathering together our stack of papers into yet another pile, this time to be notarized, I reminded myself that when we get this final pile off, that's it, we're done. Well, as long as all the papers are done right. This last pile goes to Kate in NYC who will add them to our home study, as soon as Cindy finishes that. Then Kate begins the mysterious process of authenticating everything before sending it off to Ethiopia.

It's an awesome feeling to know that this last list is the last bit of the paperwork. Pretty amazing.

We did find out today that now Ted has to go back to his doctor. According the Kate, his form had too much information, due to the sentence, "Patient reports a history of hsp." It took us a while to figure out what that even meant and why she'd write it there. Ted remembered that, while he was getting this form done, he'd get a new prescription for his zovorac, which controls the fever blisters he occasionally gets, as do several other of the Rooney siblings. The doctor decides to write that on the official form that goes to the foreign government. Why would she do this? So Kate sent it back saying that the powers that be might possibly look at that and wonder what creepy communicable disease 'hsv' is and say, "nope, no kid for you!"

Other than that form, we've also written our official letter to the Ethiopian government, stating why we want to adopt and how we'll be good parents. Three of our friends/family are (hopefully) working on those final letters of reference too.

We did run into another snag today when our bank wouldn't give us a statement saying that we are customers in good standing (which we are). They just don't do this, the lady said. Apparently, she did one herself sort of on the sly for another couple needing this statement for an adoption, but the complication for us came with ours needing to notarized. Our bank is extremely hesitant to notarize much of anything, so when she called the big bosses to ask about notarizing this, they said just not to do it at all. Thanks a lot.

And here's the big difference between Ted and me. When I hear about this snag, I get frustrated, wanting to wring someone's neck. Ted just shrugs and walks out of the bank, figuring that here's another problem to solve, in good faith that it'll get done eventually, somehow. One of the dearest traits passed down to Ted by his mother is this attitude of "Where there's a will, there's a way." With nine kids to raise, his mom's "can-do" attitude is probably the only way anything at all got accomplished.

Prime example: Fred Meyer has vanilla ice cream on sale, limit two per customer. Mom leaves a note with instructions for each kid: upon getting home from school, take this money and go buy two cartons, making sure not to go all at once, but to spread themselves out. So by the time the store closes, the Rooney freezer is stocked with a solid 18 cartons of ice cream.

My favorite example: Towards the end of her life, Ted's mom is living in a house with no basement. She decides to crawl under the house with a shovel and start digging. She loads up her truck and drives away each pile of dirt. As soon as she's dug enough to stand upright, the digging gets faster, let me tell ya. She eventually has dug a complete basement and has an apartment built in the void, which she rents out for the extra income. Oh, and she did all of this while going through cancer treatments. Ted says that by the end of it, she was completely buffed.

I want to check family photos for how long her ring finger was. One of the saddest things in my life is that I never got to meet Dolores.

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So here we are nearing the infamous waiting period. I've heard it's no fun. I'm just hoping our travel plans this summer and various visitors to our home will keep my mind occupied. With my 11-year-old niece Lauren coming for two weeks, a trip to Miami for Rusty and Carrie's wedding, an Irish couple staying in our house for our two week home exchange, a trip with both our dads to Ireland, a friend from Seattle crashing with us during her vegan cooking course, and our niece Rachel's wedding, I think enough will be going on this summer.