Paper Chasing. Literally.

(Alternately titled:  How Governor Steve Beshear Became a Part of Ella's Adoption Story)

This is a story about my plan and reality.  So you know it's going to go perfectly smoothly, right? :)

My plan:
Took today off.  I was going to get up early, drive my last two documents to the County Clerk Notary Office, get them certified, pick up my friend Stephanie, drive to Frankfort to get my last two documents certified at the state level, come home, grab some lunch, make my copies, overnight my last two documents to the courier in DC, maybe take a nap, take my rental car back to the place, pick up my car, go to church, so on and so forth.

So what actually happened?

I woke up a little late, sat in traffic, got to the County Clerk Notary Office.  The lady seemed a bit unsure of what she was doing but people were helping her and in the end it seemed okay.  So I left, picked up Steph at McDonald's, and off we went.  We got to Frankfort, parked, and headed in.

I noticed some people walking out of the Capitol building but didn't notice who.  I hear Stephanie say, "Hi!"  I turned my head because it sounded like a familiar "Hi."

Yeah, we walked right past the Governor.  Later we lamented not getting our pictures taken with him, so we took a selfie right where we passed him.

We were so close.  Just pretend he's there.

We went in, went to the Secretary of State, and were out in no time.  Stephanie did pick up a sucker and added her date-stamped sticker so that Ella will have it someday.  :)  Not that Ella will get to eat that particular sucker, but you know.  It's a keepsake.  We wandered outside in the sunshine to take a couple of fun pictures of me with my fancy documents.  Did I mention they were the last two?  I am a bit excited about that.

SO OFFICIAL.  (Sense the foreboding.)

So I get home with my lunch and my documents, sit down to eat, and my sweet friend Laura calls.  She was in town for a conference with her husband and kids, and invited me to dinner with several other friends tonight.  YES!  Absolutely.  Let me just ask to be relieved from the church nursery.  (That was no issue, thanks to our amazing Preschool Director at church.)  

I sat down around 1:15 to start making copies.  My computer was out of ink, which was a minor issue.  I looked at the seals on my documents one more time and I am glad I did.  Because the County notary seal on my home study was wrong.  They misspelled the notary's name.  

I called my agency, who very quickly recommended to go ahead and get it fixed if I could.  I called the Notary office, and they checked and confirmed it was spelled wrong.  They said I could come on in and get it fixed, no worries.  Which would be fine and no problem, except of course it had already been certified by the State.  

(A side note.  Staples are a big deal when compiling an adoption dossier.  Once the State's seal has been stapled onto the document, you cannot remove them.  If you do, the Chinese Embassy will not accept the documents and you have to go through the whole process again with that document.  So I knew fixing the County seal would nullify the State seal.  But it had to be done.) 

So basically I repeated my trip back downtown and back to Frankfort in one day.  I nearly literally chased these documents up and down I-64.  

When you get the documents, you have to make copies to send to the Embassy (you also need a set to send to the agency and a set to keep).  So I had to find a copy place since my home printer wasn't working.  It worked out that there was a FedEx close to the Post Office close to where I was to meet my friends for dinner...this feels like a version of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.  If I wasn't so tired, I would change this and make it so. :)

At any rate.  at 4:58 the Post Office accepted my documents, so they are back on track, my day off was certainly used well, and all's well that ends well.   I was blessed to have dinner with some very dear friends (some of whom I haven't seen in three years!) and enjoy some special conversations with people who are dear and special to me.  

So at the end of the long day, while I am certainly tired and spent more time driving than I intended, my original goals (minus picking up the car, but I worked that out to do tomorrow) were accomplished.  My LAST. TWO. DOCUMENTS.* are in the mail to the courier.  I got to spend the morning enjoying the sunshine and laughing with a good friend.  I ended the day with dinner with dear friends of mine.  It's been a great day.

And hey, my friend Stephanie said hi to the Governor.  So there's always that.

* - These are my last two dossier documents.  There will be other documents, but the big dossier document compiling is nearing its completion.  Which is exciting.  Hooray!