Does It Ever End? Pt. 2

Yesterday we spent our afternoon dealing with both the US CIS and the NVC offices to try to find out why in the world Ethiopia still doesn't have our approvals. NVC (the national visa cabling service) first said that they emailed the approvals to ET, then they said that they sent hard copies (which is required), then they said that it's Ethiopia's fault the stuff isn't there. They sent us back to CIS (immigration folks that issue our approvals) and they said that the NVC people only received hard copies from them (not email copies as NVC said) and that if NVC didn't get them cabled to Ethiopia properly then they'd have to re-request the original hard copies. It was the biggest debacle that is still not resolved. All we know is that NVC did re-request the approvals this morning, so that's a good thing. Now if they can just get them in hand and ship them off to AA where they belong, we could sleep a little easier.

It's so frustrating b/c all of these are US agencies - one of which won't talk to you on the phone after being on hold FOREVER and trying to navigate a bunch of # options that don't match up with your needs and both of which have no clue what they are talking about and just blame each other for everything. A third world country's beaurocracy is looking pretty good these days. :)

The good news is that these papers are needed until our final appt on the 28th of May, and our agency keeps telling us that we have plenty of time. These papers don't effect the adoption proceedings which happen on May 8th, thank goodness.

On a much happier note, we had five friends jump in to offer us Starwood points for our hotel! Huge thanks and shout outs go to Sara Beth H from Smarty Pants, Michael D from MTV, Allison B from Nickelodeon, Pam G from Wrigley, Barbara Z from Smarty Pants. We have a few other friends checking to see if they have enough points to give us. :) You guys are THE BEST!

Other progress we're making: Radames pulled out our four biggest suitcases that are now strategically positioned against the wall in the basement (you just have to laugh), we got three more docs notarized this week, we got in touch with the malaria hotline at the CDC (how sad are we that this makes us happy), we got our 2008 taxes done and out the door!, we got our sit and stroll (car seat and stroller in one) back from ganna, and we started making nightly notes and task lists on color coded notecards to alleviate the daytime bickering! That's a big one. And Addison turned 6 months old on Sunday. How could we forget that one? :)