Discouraged

Okay, first I have to say that I KNEW that adopting would be a long and sometimes difficult experience.  BUT I also thought that the hard time would be the waiting for the baby.  When "they" say the PAPERCHASE....."they" aren't kidding.  I have been really on-top of things so that I'm not the reason for holding up the process, but there are just some things that I don't have control over.  Our home-study was ready with our agency, but they were still waiting for our FBI clearances, which also took wayyyy longer than we expected.  We got the news about the two-time travel to Ethiopia and I really ran to get things done so if there was even a glimmer of hope that we would make the deadline I would be ready.  That deadline is coming up soon (May 1st)... soooo soon.  And then we heard that not only did we have to have a referral by that time, but our dossier also had to be in Ethiopia by that date.  Things were looking a little more dull at that point.  BUT..... I was still determined that I would not be the reason for holding anything up!  We've been waiting for our home-study to get here so we can get it off to Pierre for certification and I almost stayed home this past Thursday-Sunday from Mitchell to wait for it to come.  It needs both of our notarized signatures before we can send it off.  Hopefully it will come today.  Dic will be home tonight to sign it and then off again in the morning--so we have a very small window of opportunity.  Once we get it back from Pierre we can include it with our application for our I-600A (immigration Visa) paperwork and all of our other documents for our dossier (which we have complete) and get that sent off to the agency in OR.  Then I can begin to relax a little more. :0)  SO I will take a deep breath and do a little praying today that all goes smoothly.  There isn't a real good chance that we will meet the May 1st deadline (especially when there are probably 100 families waiting for the same thing).......but a girl can hope, RIGHT?? :0)