The Certificates Are Here!

This may not seem like big news to all of you, but our Birth and Marriage Certificates have arrived and are on their ways to being authenticated! This is great news to us because sometimes these states take their sweet time to get official documents mailed out. One small hurdle is behind us! I was actually pretty nervous about my birth certificate from Michigan because it was the last one to come and it was taking quite a while. The other two states at least responded quickly so we knew that they were processing the requests. Michigan, however, was completely silent. In fact, I was nervous enough that they hadn't recieved my request that I sent a new request through the internet. So, I'll end up with 3 new birth certificates to add to my pile of 5 others with older dates.
Our advocate at the agency thinks that things will start to speed up now, but I am trying not to get my hopes up too much. I keep thinking to future dates of when things might start to happen, but I know this is a dangerous game. We have already been delayed by almost 2 months, and more delays wouldn't be unheard of. I just keep hoping that by Christmas 2006 we will have our daughter home with us.

We are still pressing on with our autobiographies and they are taking much longer than I had hoped. It's not easy summing up 34 years in a short essay. I keep finding interesting (at least I think so) parts of my life that I want to write about. Will anybody really want to read all this? I wonder how bored the social worker gets reading about everyone's *exciting* lives?

Time moves like molasses

Time keeps ticking by and we are no closer to adopting then we were a month ago. We are still waiting for our fingerprints to return from the state, which is as slow as you would expect. The prints were sent to the state on October 17th, so I really don't expect any word before December 17th. Then with the holidays and all, I can't imagine we will start our homestudy until the beginning of the new year. Our timing just seems to be so off.
I'm also still waiting on my birth certificate from the fine state of Michigan. They had no problem cashing my check over a month ago, but still no word. Our other certificates are already back, which makes me wonder if I sent my request to the wrong office. You would hope that they would at least let you know if there was a problem. I even went so far as to reorder the certificate over the internet today. It should only take about 2 weeks, according to their website.
Patrick is continuing to attend the pre-adopt classes without me. I'm a bit jealous that he gets to meet and talk with other people who are adopting. I hope that he is getting lots of good information. When I get home I'll grill him. :-)
I guess this is going to be another short entry, but everything is moving so slowly that there is nothing much to tell.....