I spent the majority of today driving all over town trying to collect dossier documents. First, Owen dropped our sample letter off at our doctor’s office this morning only to be told that they now charge $30.00 per document. Say what?!? When we had them do one for our home study in September of last year, it was free. Needless to say, we weren’t happy about that. Anyhoo, after that we headed down to the Sheriff’s Dept. to drop off our requests for criminal clearance. Those will be ready for pickup Wednesday. Then I spoke with my employer and made arrangements to fax them the sample employment letter. I drove to my Mom’s work and she sent the fax. Turns out the fax number was wrong. I call them back and get voice mail…twice, and no return call. No surprise there. Guess I’ll have to tackle that one tomorrow. Then I drive to our doctor’s office to pick up the letters. They had the wrong address on both letters. I sat there for 10 minutes while they rewrote, renotarized and resigned new letters, and after giving them my sob story of how expensive adoption is, they only charged us $30.00 for both documents (which still stinks as far as I’m concerned). Looking at the letters after I get home, I find that the notary stamp is “faint” on one side on both letters. By this time, I’m fed-up, frustrated and cussing a blue streak. Hopefully, they’ll pass. At this point, I’m just flat-out done for the day.

As frustrating as it all was, I do feel like I’ve made some headway with the dossier. Initially, I felt so overwhelmed and confused about the whole thing. I didn’t know where to start. Now I just feel determined. I guess the hardest part is we have to rely on other people to get these things done. Unfortunately, with the exception of very few, most of those people are incompetent!

 Another thing Owen and I have been mulling over is gender choice. Ethiopia and our agency allows it. Unlike many of the Asian countries, Ethiopia doesn’t seem to have more of one gender available than the other. With the Vietnam program, we were more than likely going to get a boy referral. When we initially switched to Ethiopia, we were thinking girl. After talking it over, I think we’re going to leave the gender selection up to fate. I just don’t feel right about choosing. I feel like we’ll get the baby we’re meant to have. Boy or girl, it doesn’t matter.

Last weekend Owen and I toured the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir (temple) Atlanta in Lilburn, GA. It’s the largest Hindu stone temple constructed outside India. The temple was built using 4,500 tons of Italian Carrera marble, 4,300 tons of Turkish limestone and 3,500 tons of Indian pink sandstone. No steel or metal was used in the construction, and each piece was hand-carved and numbered, imported from India, then divided into sections and set in place. It took 18 months to build. It is absolutely breathtaking! The only word I can think of to describe being inside the mandir is…magical. We couldn’t take pictures inside but here are a couple of the exterior.