Almost a month????

I cannot believe it has been almost a month since I last posted! Time sure does fly when you're drowning in paper!

It is now public knowledge that the Kyrgyzstan Embassy has changed dossier requirements. What this meant for us was redoing a good portion of our dossier, updating dates (because certain things now expire), getting a hold of new documents, having FBI clearances done and resubmitting the dossier for translation. We received our FBI clearances today - there's something oddly satisfying about seeing that "No arrest record" stamped across the page even though we were pretty darn sure that's how they'd come back! :)

We are currently one document shy of having a complete dossier. Once we get that in our hot, little hands it's off to the Secretary of State's office for a little authentication. After that's done and all of the translations are back, we will make many pounds of copies and ship everything off to our courier in DC for authentication at the Kyrgyz embassy. From there, le dossier will be on it's way to Kyrgyzstan!

It's shocking to me to look at our timeline and realize that we've already been at this for over three months. Last time I had our dossier assembled, authenticated and off to Kyrgyzstan about six weeks after we sent in our formal application. A few weeks later we had a referral and we were home with our little monkey a few months after that. While many parts of the process are easier this time (the waiting, the bumps in the road, the uncertainty), finding time to deal with all of the tediousness of it is much, much more difficult.

We had both of our large rummage sales over the last month and they were a success despite the recent flooding that prohibits a person from getting anywhere near our little town right now. We were so blessed by donations from friends, family, coworkers, and acquaintances - we thank you all and are truly grateful!!

We are gearing up for our Silent Auction Fundraiser this coming Sunday. Again, we have been overwhelmed with people's generosity and are thrilled that we have about 25 really amazing auction items! As far as funds, it's tough to see the bright side, but we sure try. We are about 1/3 of the way to having the money we need to bring our little angel home. Something deep inside reminds me that it will all work out because it has to. It did last time and we were able to bring E home, so I do have faith that it will work again and LP will join our family.