Snow!

Due to the work created by the massive snowfall here (32" over 24 hours), we've been absent from our blog for a few days.  Jon had a business trip to San Jose last week and was to arrive home Saturday at 12:00am...in the heart of the snow-pocolypse.  Needless to say, his flight was canceled a day or two in advance.  He was able to take the red-eye on Friday night to Boston, where he rented a car and drove home!!  While you may feel sorry for him, he had a blast.  Snow driving is like a day at the amusement park for him.  He called me several times from the road, starting the conversation with, "You won't believe what I just did...."  In the meantime, back at the ranch, I spent my time shoveling and shoveling and shoveling and shoveling.  We lost power on Saturday morning/afternoon from 5:30am to 2:30pm.  I was able to spend some of that time with our good friends, who came to get us in their 4 x 4.  Sunday morning, church was canceled, so we decided to walk to the grocery store a mile away to return our Redbox movies and get some fresh air.  It was fun to walk down the center of major streets and not worry about traffic.  It made me wish we lived in a truly walking community.  Overall, I find these big events, which change the way people move in their lives, to be a blessing.  People slow down, help their neighbors, say "hi" as you pass by, and are generally more "neighborly."  I wonder why it takes a record-breaking snowstorm or some other catastrophic event to change our behavior.

In adoption news, I organized the documents which need to be authenticated by three different states for our dossier.  What is authentication?  Basically, we send the documents (our birth certificates, marriage certificate, and a letter of employment from Jon's work) to the states (Minnesota, Missouri, and North Carolina) in which they originated so that the Secretary of State for each state can verify that they are indeed authentic documents.  This is required any time you send an "American" document overseas.  Further, all of the documents in our dossier will be apostilled by the U.S. Secretary of State before they are sent to Rwanda.  That will be one of the last steps in the process.

Today, Jon is working on sending the documents to the various states and we are going back and forth with the home study coordinator for AWAA, who has to create the final home study, to clear up a few issues with the information.  We are looking forward to finishing the home study process by the end of the week.