Dossier forms

Hello gang! I can't believe another week has flown by! Too fast! Summer will be over before I know it and I'm no where near ready for school to start (especially since I will be kind of homeschooling Tyler - my almost 11 year old. He will be attending Oak Tree Academy 2 days a week and home with me 3. We'll see how it goes.). Anyways -
I did finally get ahold of "someone" at the Secretary of the Commonwealth's office last friday - and she was able to fix and send out a new form for the one that had the wrong date. She didn't know what to do about the missing one - so she said Tabitha would have to call me back. I didn't hear anything from her, so on Tuesday I called, and Tabitha sent out an authentication paper Fedex. I've got all my authentications now! Yeah! . . . . However . . . .
Today I was talking with my notary about having to resign some revised forms, and when I was looking over the old forms and authentications, I noticed that 4 of the authentications were missing the words "Notary Public" where it states who the official signiture is from. So . . . . back on the phone to Tabitha. She corrected them and is FedEx'ing them today. :) Man - 3 days in one week I've gotten to see the FedEx truck at my house! How exciting. :) hee, hee. Anyways, Tabitha has been really nice and unfortunately for her - we were not the only ones who have had problems. Tabitha just came on staff in the spring and has done a superb job of catching up on alot of the backlog, but in July they hired a temp/intern to help her (Tabitha said she was only about a week behind instead of 4 months like before). . . but it looks like the temp/intern may have done more damage than help. Poor thing. I'm just glad we were able to get all of it straightened out over the phone!

So - here's our other news . . . . Some of you know that Jeremy has a vehicle that doesn't fit our whole family (only 5 people), and so when my car is getting repaired - we can't go anywhere all together. We have been praying about getting a bigger van/vehicle - but have never felt a peace about the timing or the money. I kept telling him to hang on a little longer. :) His car has over 170k miles on it - but it's not a horrible car. I've been in worse (ie - the first car I ever rode in with Jeremy - his rust-colored, and rusted, diesel Chevy Chevette!!! Ask about it sometime!). anyways - last sunday we were having lunch at my mom's and when J went to get in his car, and the brakes went all the way to the floor! Scary thing is - my dad had just driven the car up to the store! PTL he didn't get hurt! Jeremy was upset about having to put more money into a car we wanted to get rid of anyways, and he started to complain to God "if You want me to have a bigger van, then YOU have to pay for it!". OK - so it wasn't very polite or reverant - but God heard it. We went to a party at a friends, and they had just purchased a new van (nice! Envy!). They asked us if we knew anyone who needed their old van? Hunh? They were going to give it away? Hunh?! Actually . . . . . . we do! :)
So - we are getting a bigger vehicle! :) It actually has more miles on it than J's car and needed a little bit of repair work - but we agreed to pay for the repairs (cheaper than buying a newer van, that's for sure!) and I think this van will (hopefully) get us a little further along till we can get a newer (less milage) vehicle . . . . after we pay for this adoption! PTL! God is good! He hears - even when we are angry and frustrated . . . He still cares and loves to surprise us!

Well, I've just been reminded that I am missing out on Fun Family Friday here at the West house - so I need to get off the computer. Thanks for taking the time to check on us, and keep us in your prayers. Also - a BIG THANKS goes to our friends for giving us your van (you know who you are) and for Tabitha and all she's done to help us with our authentications (don't know if she will ever read this though)!
God bless you all today! He's in control . . . . and that's a good thing! :)
-Lori :)

Snap Shirt

Hey guys! If you have a blog (or other site) you've got to check out this cool site! You can type in your url and it will scan your site for the most commonly used words and make a word clump for you. You can then order it printed on a shirt, mug or other stuff. It's interesting to see the words you use the most often as well. You can change out some words if you don't like the ones on there - even change the font and color. Here's a sample (in chocolate brown/Helvitica)I took of our site today.
-Lori :)

Mei Ming Adoption Ministry

Most of you who read my blog already know about the adoption ministry at our church. For those who don't - it is called Mei Ming (which means "no name" and Mei is a common name given to the orphaned chinese girls). Click on the link to check out their new website or go to www.meiming.org. You will find testimonies of several families that have or are in the process of adopting, as well as our meeting schedule and more.
-Lori :)

Redo!

I still have not heard back from the Sec. of the Commonwealth - after 3 messages left and several more phone calls over the last 2 days. I keep getting a recording to leave a voice message. I'll try again tomorrow. Though, now it may be a moot point. . . . .here's why . . .

I had Jeremy fax all the copies of our documents to our new agency to be reviewed for accuracy before sending to the Guatemala consulate for their authentication/certification (whatever it's called). I had done this with AHH and they had said everything looked fine, though I had questioned them about a few things that didn't seem right to me. I was trusting the "experts" though. Anyways - my new agency prides itself on being picky during the dossier prep part (isn't that what we are paying them for anyways??) so that we would not get kicked out of PGN in Guatemala (Procuraduria General de la Nacion . . . .it's like the Attorney General's office) to have to redo our forms then. KAS has only had 4 clients ever get kicked out of PGN - one was something they wouldn't have expected and the other 3 were things they should have caught. Some people get kicked out of PGN several times and alot of people just expect to get kicked out at least once. Anyways - I am glad that KAS has 3 different people looking over all our forms to check for mistakes. I'd rather fix it now than later! So - as you can guess . . . we have to redo a few forms, get them notarized and authenticated again. That's ok. It was disheartening at first, as some of the issues were the same ones I had raised before, but some of the things were not. So . . . back on a small paperchase again! Hopefully this will be it for dossier paperwork! :)
-Lori :)

Elizabeth-Fox.com

For those of you that may be new to our blog, my wonderful and very talented mom - Beth Fox (or Elizabeth) has recently started doing beautiful colored pencil drawings as a hobby but also as an artist. You can click on the title (or the picture in the sidebar) to take you to her new website (still in progress) and see some samples of what she has already done (of my beautiful kids and nephew of course). She also has a revised price list that includes pictures done of just the head and shoulders.

I know that many of you have expressed an interest in having her do a portrait for you (taken -from some of your own photos - or any professional ones you have even), but I wouldn't wait till it's almost Christmas to decide to get it done! She will definitely have more time to devote to art before the school season begins (she is a part time teacher and Math tutor as well) - so contact her to get your portrait started before eveyone else does! Don't worry if the picture you have doesn't have the best background, etc. - she will want a few pics anyways to get a feel for the person's personality, looks, etc.

She has graciously agreed to donate a small portion of her profits that come as a referral from me to our adoption expenses - so make sure you tell her you saw her work on my blog, or was referred by me! Thanks so much!

Lori :)

ps - I got our dossier back . . . . but guess what . . . . . the Sec of the Commonwealth messed up! I sent off 17 documents to be authenticated, and they only sent back 16 authentications (don't worry - they did send back all 17 documents), and one of the authentications had the wrong date on it (of when the notary sign it). I tried contacting them 5 times today and left 2 messages. Didn't hear back from them. I pray I can get this resolved quickly. . . . . . Just another adventure!!!! :)