The Crazy Day

(Don't judge...I swear I do clean, sometimes)

It was an average Monday. The house was in complete disarray from the weekend, piles of laundry needing to be done, dishes needing to be washed, lunch needing to be cleaned up, me needing a shower, etc...I had just laid the boys down for their naps (1:00) and decided to run to the mailbox really quickly to see if our USCIS approval came. I honestly wasn't expecting it to come for another few weeks, but somehow I knew it would be in the mailbox just because it would be close to impossible to do what Jamie and I had already decided we would do when it came. Sorry if that doesn't make any sense. Anyways, it was there. The last and final piece of paper that we needed to finish off our dossier was there in the mailbox. I about had a heart attack. I ran back to the house, grabbed my phone to call Jamie to tell him the big news, and of course he didn't answer. He always answers. So I get on the computer to see if he's signed onto iGoogle, where we chat throughout the day, and nothing. So I call again, and again...nothing still. ARG! I was getting a little flustered. I needed help making a decision. We had decided that the day our USCIS approval came we/I would pack up the kids and drive it down to the Eugene office before they closed. It was a crazy idea, but if you think about it it makes complete sense. Every piece of paper that we have been compiling for the last 5 months was in this. Our birth certificates, marriage license, home study, tax returns, copies of our passports, a million notarized documents, and the state certified documents, etc...the list goes on and on. The last thing we would want to happen is have that package get lost or stolen. So we would drive it. So why the rush? Well, the moment that the Eugene office gets your dossier, you are officially put on the wait list. We didn't want to wait another day.

Finally, I got a hold of Jamie. He said "Pack up the boys, I'll finish up some work really fast and come get me on your way." Oh boy, okay. So I had just laid the boys down, and I heard Toby awake still. So I got him up, and quickly got him dressed and ready. I decided I needed to call Holt and make sure it was alright for us to drop it off, they said yes, but that they closed at 4:30. I thought it was 5:00. Yikes. I washed my face, packed some snacks for the boys, a bottle for Jack, got our beautiful orange shoe box full of our precious paperwork, loaded all of that into the car with Toby, and ran inside to wake up Jack. 10 minutes later we were picking Jamie up from work at around 2:30.



About 20 miles from the Holt office our gas light turned on. We both agreed to ignore it. We only had 30 minutes until the office closed and we didn't want to be rude and show up right when they were locking the doors. So we prayed. I know our car can go for a while with the gas light on, but we've never really tested exactly how many miles it can go. We thankfully didn't run out of gas, although towards the end our car was sputtering a little. We made it to the office in time, asked for Laura and sat down with her to go over it all. Thankfully Jamie is a freak about checking things about 2.5 million times and Laura was impressed that we didn't make any of the 'normal' mistakes that people do. Woohoo! We got up to leave and I asked nervously if that meant we were put on the wait list and she said "Oh yeah, you guys are number 62. Congrats!" My heart leapt. We did it! We can just sit back and wait a while. No more paper work! No more deadlines! No more racing around trying to finish things up! We did it, but more accurately GOD did it. He lead us the WHOLE way. Praise Him for His faithfulness. Now on to the wait....