Okay, okay, so our "official" dossier is not off yet...but I did send a fairly complete copy of it to Natalia today. There are a couple things I know are missing, but they are things that I'm waiting on from Amy (our social worker). And as soon as we get the docs we need from her, we'll just stick them in their appropriate places and our paperwork will be almost complete and waiting for the green light from Natalia.

Essentially, what we're doing is making sure that everything looks "just right" before we take the time/spend the money to have it all apostilled (remember, apostilling is when we take our dossier to the Secretary of State's Office in Montgomery to get the state seal on it all). Natalia will give our paperwork a thorough look-over, and then let me know of any changes that should be made (crossing our fingers it will be few, as opposed to several!). Then Nathan & I will take off a day of work and hand deliver our lives on paper to Montgomery.

After a wait (hopefully a brief wait!) we'll have our apostilled dossier back in hand and will just be waiting for our 171-H to come back from USCIS (truth be told, we'll probably go on and send our dossier, minus the 171, to CHI for final check-overs...) and then as soon as we receive our 171, we'll send that to them, and everything will be a go for sending to Russia!

So I guess that is a fairly uneventful update, but I do want to ask that you all continue to send up prayers on our behalf. There is no telling exactly how long it might take for the USCIS to approve us...and I don't want to put a huge rush on something that will "happen in good time," but I guess it can't hurt to ask for a little help from up above...right? :) Thanks for all you have already done, and thanks for your continued prayers and support...we really do appreciate each of you!

In other areas of our life, there is really not a lot of new stuff happening... Alabama football started last weekend (ROLL TIDE!) and we watched the game on TV (rather than actually going to the game). Congrats to the team on a victory over the Univ. of Hawaii (man, it seemed like that team was full of huge guys!!)!

Aside from Crimson Tide football, Nathan is playing church league softball...on the 'old guys' team (as opposed to the 'young guys' team, full of the college guys)!! I think it's pretty funny that Nathan is now, officially, an old guy (because you know...church league softball determines those sorts of things! ... haha). I guess that makes me old, too...and I suppose that's going on being correct, considering that my 10 year highschool reunion is in less than a MONTH!?! How did THAT happen?!

Oh well, anyway...I guess I'll quit the random ramblings for now. Let us hear from y'all! I know we're being kinda quiet on the blog, these days, but we still enjoy hearing from all of you! And don't forget that we're open to questions and the like, should you decide you've got something you want to ask!

Till later... Much love to all! :)