If a tree falls in the woods and there's no one around to hear it fall, does it make a sound?

I went for my physical and bloodwork today. Robert goes in on Thursday. We do a little bit of the mountain of paperwork everyday. Our philosophy is, eventually we should get to the end of the process. Last week we gathered notarized copies of the house deed, letters of recommendation from friends, and completed the history section of the home study. This week we will attempt to file the I-600A petition to adopt form with Homeland Security. They want a completed homestudy to accompany the form, but we're going to try to get the paperwork in so we can be scheduled for the biometrics testing. We need to touch base with Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement and submit a more recent criminal history check, but first we have to get to the police dept. and have our fingerprints done. Eventually this should all get done.

Sending for notarized copies of our marriage certificate proved to be the most humorous point of the process thus far. We attempted to use a vital statistics service to get copies of our marriage license initially. A few days went by and I received a voice message on my cell phone from the company indicating that they were unable to process vital statistic requests from the state of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina. Apparently, many of the records stored in Orleans Parish were unavailable. Unavailble? As in no longer existed??? For a moment, just a brief moment, a look passed beetween Robert and I. So if there's no record . . .? As a bright new future stretched out before us, I realized that our marriage technically took place in Franklinton Parish and the records would be there. Sigh. We quickly reaffirmed our love and commitment to one another. Who needs a piece of paper anyway? I located the contact info for the Franklington court house and now have the certified copies in hand to prove that Robert and I are indeed stuck together . . . legally.