More good stuff and a bump in the road

Well my lack of blogging should be an indication that we've been pretty busy here at the Poulin house. Throw in the usual activities, add the fun traditions and schedule a few basbetball practices and this family is going non-stop!
One of my most favorite traditions my family has done for years is a girls' weekend away. It consists of shopping, eating, drinking coffee, laughing, eating some more and laughing even more. This past Friday was our night away and it did not dissapoint. Great food (I ate way too much), lots of coffee, tons of laughs and just a little bit of shopping. Perfect. Rocky is so good about kicking me out the door to enjoy time with the sweet women in my life and he even had the laundry caught up and the house clean when I got home. He makes it look so easy!
Sunday Sam and friend had the opportunity to read and light the Advent candle for service. He did a great job and I'm so proud of him for getting up and reading in front of the congregation. I can talk in front of kids all day but put me in front of adults and my brain turns to mush.
                         
Next up was the adorable children's choir. It's a long-standing tradition that the wee ones dress up as the animals that were in the manger. It never gets old seeing them dressed up singing and doing their hand motions. This was Sam's last year for Children's choir and while I was stifling the tears he was doing the happy dance.
So now onto the bump in the road. As most of you know we've been working our tails off to get our dossier done and submitted. We have been hopeful of having a number by Christmas. Last week we were just awaiting the copy of our finished homestudy so we could add that to the rest of the paperwork and finally get it sent off to AGCI. On Tuesday when our social worker called and said she'd send it in the mail on Wednesday I quickly responded with a "how about we just come and get it?" So Rock being the great husband he is jumped in the car and drove an hour to pick it up so we could get it to FedEx and overnight it that day. When he got home he handed me the paperwork and just to be safe I checked the last page for the notary and what do you know?! The notary expired in three days! Aghhhh!!! For those of you in the adoption world you know what a big deal this is. All our documents must have a notarization that is good for at least one year. So you can see how this was an issue. Thankfully our social worker was so wonderful and had a new copy with the appropriate notarization to us by the next day. However, because of this little hiccup we thought we'd better re-check all the notary expiration dates and sure enough....two more needed to be redone! At this point I'm trying to keep the tears from coming~you have to know what a long and emotional process this is to really understand my state of mind. Rock quickly reminds me these are little things we can quickly take care of and better to send it in complete than have to make a bunch of changes. He makes the necessary phone calls and e-mails to get the revised letters and now it looks like we're ready to go. But no wait...there's more! This morning I'm having the best time with some friends (Darcee and Linda) at breakfast and Darcee and I are talking dossier papework. To make a long story short through this conversation I realized there was another document we would have to have redone and I would need to drive about an hour to the state capital to have it done. So guess what the girls and I did this afternoon?
                              
Yep, we made our way to Olympia. Two happy meals and a cat nap later we were there and 10 minutes later we were heading back out the door with appropriate letter in hand. Praying it is FINALLY done!