Where to begin? I’ve tried starting this post several times, only to be sidetracked…so, I’m gonna give this a good ole college try and see if I can get y’all up-to-date! Here goes! (a note from the end of this post…you may wanna grab a snack and put your feet up, ‘cause this is long…sorry!!!)

Alright, well, we got everything to the State Capitol on Tuesday…and what an experience!! Here’s the rundown:

We had intended on leaving from Tuscaloosa around 10:00...but I left work a little later than I'd anticipated, and on my way home, I realized my business license was up for renwal - and Tuesday was the last day to get it done without penalty! So...because of these 2 things, we were late leaving Tuscaloosa. We did not get out of town before the stress of the past week or so got to me, and I had a complete meltdown (bless my precious husband’s patient heart....I just don’t know what I’d do without him!) but with Nathan’s help, I composed myself and we were on our way.

We had to make a stop in B’ham to pick up a couple last-minute docs from Amy. We got to B’ham, where she had patiently waited (along with her precious little one who was more than ready for his nap! Amy, if you’re reading this, a huge THANKS from us to you!!).

After picking up the docs, we grabbed sandwiches at McD’s and then were on our way to Montgomery.

When we got about 30 minutes from our State Capitol, I did a final run through of our docs, and you’ll never believe it. I found a mistake. I had “rounded” our salaries on one page, when it should’ve matched all the other salary quotes in other docs “down to the penny.” ARRRRRGGGHHHH. Needless to say, another meltdown ensued and Nathan was about at his wits’ end with me! He kept saying that we could just get it apostilled the way it was…surely it would be okay. And I was not satisfied with that. Afterall, this day was something that we’d been looking forward to for MONTHS, and in my mind, everything needed to be perfect. (Timeout to say to those of you that say I should learn to go-with-the-flow…I KNOW IT, I’m working on that! Thing is, I’ve not always been uptight and easily-stressed – that seems to be a skill I’ve learned lately that I am TRYING to unlearn.)

Anyway, Nathan finally told me to just lay back and go to sleep. So I did doze for a minute, when he woke me up with a fantastic idea – if I could get the document emailed to me, then we could stop off at the State BPP (Board of Pardons and Paroles) office and print it off with the corrections! There’s a notary in-office, so that wouldn’t be a problem! I got on the phone and got ahold of Kelly (one of my fantastic employees!) who emailed me exactly what I needed. We stopped at the State office, corrected it, had it notarized, and we were FINALLY on our way!

Here we are…Nathan was not SO happy with the fact that I was taking a picture of him outside of the state BPP office. I'm such an embarrassment with my silly camera!!! ;)

As it happens, the Secretary of State’s office is less than 2 blocks from the BPP office, so we walked down the way to the Alabama State House. The ladies in the Authentication office were SO helpful and SO nice -- and this is first hand information!! See, let me describe an apostille to you. The notary public that notarizes each document is looked up in the Sec of State’s computer. Each notary is listed, and an apostille is printed out that has the notary’s name, location, etc. on it. The apostille also has the State Seal put onto it, to make it official. Well, right in the middle of apostilling our documents, the “head” lady noticed that one of our notary’s names was misspelled in their computer! And she said that there’s a good chance that Russia would not accept documents that had misinformation on them (these had the notary’s name/seal spelled correctly, but the apostille had it spelled incorrectly!).

Believe it or not, I kept my cool.

Luckily, the problem was ‘only’ with our million passport copies and one other typed document. So, in keeping my cool, I thought, “you know, we’ve made it this far, I’m not leaving this city till everything is just right!” So I told the lady we had our passports in the car, if she had a notary (otherwise, we planned to run back up to the BPP office)…and if they would let me use one of the public-use computers, I’d retype the document and also have it notarized. She ended up calling a notary from another office who graciously came down and waited while Nathan ran to grab our passports (side note, he couldn’t find them, so came all the way back without them…I told him exactly where they were, and then he went back out and found them. whew!)…..and the “head lady” ended up retyping our document so we could sign it & have it notarized.

Have I mentioned how nice & helpful these ladies were?!?

I should also mention a man who came in to inquire about some tracks of land (or something like that)…right while these ladies were in the middle of getting us set up with an apostilled dossier. The man (who was an older gentleman) ended up sitting down on a couch in the office and falling asleep. It did take a while, and I felt the compulsive need to apologize profusely to the man, but really didn’t want to wake him up.

And so ends the story of how our dossier became apostilled.

When we got back out to the car, I told Nathan I wanted to be sure that we had EVERYTHING before we left the city…so we went through and checked off all of our documents. Except one. There was a discrepancy between the number of “Questionnaires” we needed…one checklist said we needed ONE per parent. The other checklist said we needed two “Questionnaires.” Period. (everything else, on this particular checklist, if it said 2, it meant 2 for each parent) And we had been going by the first checklist! I frantically called Natalia who was in a meeting with parents…the receptionist at CHI ended up taking my question, asking it to N really quickly, and then we had our answer. We only needed one “Questionnaire” per parent….for a total of 2 “Questionnaires.”

So we were truly set and on our way home.

About 30 minutes outside of Montgomery, our transmission light came on (it’s a solid 2-hr. drive back to Tuscaloosa), so we had a panic moment. I think I’ve forgotten to mention that we had agreed at the last minute to host our church’s college students’ Halloween party, and we were already pushing it to make it back to finish cleaning house! AND there were no decorations up yet (huge thanks to my sister & brother, who took care of most of the decorating!!). The party was to start at 7:00…..we ended up driving back much slower than we typically might, so it was close to 6:00 before we got back into Tuscaloosa (update on the car – we took it to the transmission shop yesterday and they couldn’t find anything wrong with it. Of course, the transmission light went OFF as I was driving the car to the shop!)

Thanks to my sister & brother, the house got decorated and cleaned and set up…if it hadn’t been for them, our house would’ve been pretty bland. Long story short, we had a good time…Nathan created a bonfire in our backyard (it was a HUGE fire at times – thank goodness the fire dept didn’t show up!) and my youngest brother ended up making a surprise visit from none other than…Montgomery!! :) Kristy & Patrick (Nathan’s sister & brother-in-law) brought Natalie (our niece) over, but I had regrettably run out of candy by the time they got there (I don’t know where all the trick-or-treaters came from …last year, we didn’t have so many!!) Judging from her bag, it looked like she had enough candy to keep her till next Halloween…so it was really nice to see her, even if we didn’t have candy to give to her. I’m such a terrible aunt!!

Anyway – so now the chapter about shipping off our Dossier……….

Yesterday, before carrying my car to the transmission shop, I stopped at Kinko’s/FedEx to make copies of – and ship – the dossier. I finished making the copies (and YES, barring any human error, it appears that everything was there, in order and ready to go!)…went over to the FedEx portion of the store, and realized I’d forgotten the pictures we have to send…as well as our passports. I called Meredith (also one of my fantastic employees!) who picked up what I needed and brought it to me. So…I got it all in a box, paid for overnight shipping, had Meredith take a couple of cheesy pictures, and then it was GONE! Gone from my hands and now going to another part of the country, where I now have no control over it! Here are the pictures Meredith took:

Here’s a pic of me handing the box to the nice FedEx man:

But the story does not end there. If you thought so, you should’ve thunk again!! ;) I went to Target at lunch…was in the frozen food section, and realized that I HAD NOT enclosed our dossier fee in that important box!!!!!!!!!!!! Wonder of all wonders, since I had written “do not forget $X check” on the page where I had Natalia’s address printed out!!!

I talked to Natalia, she said that it’s not the first time that has happened, and that I could mail the check separately. No big deal. But I still wanted our check to arrive close to the time that our package arrived, so last night before church, Nathan & I stopped at FedEx to ship our check. I thought to ask, and found out our box had not been picked up yet, so the kind people at FedEx reprinted a label…let me open up my box and stick this important check inside.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, THAT concludes our pilgrimage to the State Capitol, mishaps of the apostille and the final farewell of our dossier from Tuscaloosa, AL. I hope to update you on its safe arrival in Tennessee very soon!!