Monday, January 19, 2009

notarizations, authentications, and apostilles...oh my!

We had a lot of stuff go down this week.

First, we received the last of our documents, which included the I-171H, the blessing of the US government.

Thursday night we had the last of our documents notarized. Friday morning Steve headed to the Clerk of Courts office to have them authenticated. Friday afternoon, we left for Columbus to make a visit to the Secretary of States office to get everything apostilled. A grand total of 40 documents made the trip, which represented the past 6 months of work, and the criteria for which Samuel and Rowan will be selected. Its hard to imagine that 28.5 (or 30.5 for Steve) years can be boiled down to 40 pieces of paper.

Anyway, we had fun on our road trip. It was probably the most fun 4 hours in a car I've ever had. Don't worry, we took pictures.

Steve, the fearless ship commander.

All 40, along for the ride.

Our tasty, and highly nutritious steakhouse burgers from BK.


The Royal Inn. This has nothing to do with our adoption. We stopped to get gas, and noticed the hotel. A friend of ours once spend about 3 horrible hours in this location. If you know him, ask him the story. It's well worth it.


Mag says 15 minutes left in the journey. Now that does not include making laps around the city to find parking.


Downtown C-bus from I-71. The land of milk and honey.


Me, folding dollar bills to insert in the payment slot. We discovered there is no parking in downtown Columbus, so we found a rouge lot about 6 blocks away. On Friday, it was about 1 degree. As we shivered inserting the bills and walking to the building, we kept reminding ourselves that it was much colder in Russia.


We got fancy visitor badges.
All told, the visit was about an hour. They took our documents behind a closed door, and the waiting began. We knew things were going well when we heard the repetitive "cachunk" of the stapler as the apostille was attached to our documents.
No photos from the return trip. Sorry. And don't worry, I won't show you what every document looks like.

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