DAH-SEE-AY

According to dictionary dot com........

DOSSIER - noun - a collection or file of documents on the same subject; especially a complete file containing detailed information about a person or topic.

Sometimes it seems that adoption people speak their own language. Adoptionese maybe.

Today, I thought I'd share with you a little of that adoptionese:

OUR DOSSIER HAS BEEN SENT !!!

It's a funny thing, really. We have labored hard over that set of papers. Papers that started out with a simple two-page adoption agency application. From there, we applied for a home study. We filled out more agency forms. We completed educational requirements. We have written our testimonies; we have drawn our family trees. We've had meetings with guidance counselors and doctors appointments. We even proved that the dogs are up to date on their shots. People have written letters on our behalf and we have had more things notarized than I care to count.

When we began getting close, we set a goal to have the dossier (the final set of documents....the set that will represent us in Ethiopia) out of our hands by Thanksgiving. It didn't quite happen that way but, just the same, our agency will have it in their hands by 10:30 a.m. on Monday morning.

And as much as we have wanted it gone; as much as we have wished this part was behind us, letting go of it was hard. And wonderful all at the same time.

What happens next you ask? The dossier goes to our agency in Louisville, KY. It then goes to West Sands Adoption (our referring agency....coming up soon: "What's a referral?") in Utah; while in Utah it is authenticated by the state of Utah. Next it goes to a courier in Washington DC who hand-delivers it for US authentication before heading to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for translation and processing.

Thank you for saying a little prayer for our dossier and the little girl who, ultimately, will join our family as a result of it. Praise God for the lives of our family who have already been changed by it.

P.S. I am unable to rearrange the pictures at the top of this post which, actually, is another little side story to our dossier's departure......

My laptop is having issues so, before we found a Fed/Ex Kinko's location, we had to go to MacAuthority to see about having my computer fixed. Since we were in that area of town, Jeff put "FedEx/Kinkos" in his GPS and it referred us to the closest one; a location on Broadway in downtown Nashville. A location, mind you, that we would have never chosen on our own. We entered this location to find Ellen (pictured above), who was so helpful and kind to us. Turns out, Ellen is from Africa. Ghana to be exact....what are the chances?

There are several little things like this that have happened throughout this process. The graphic designer that produced our shirt images.....he's adopted. The screen printer who is printing them....he's adopting.