First of Many Forms

Saturday my husband and I made our second trip to the notary for this adoption: the second with many more to come. We notarized some power of attorney forms for our facilitators to work on our behalf in Matthew and Ivanna's country. We also notarized a child specific petition. This simply states that Phillip and I have intent to adopt Matthew and Ivanna. Our prayer is that this will be enough to keep them from being transferred to the institution. It is not a guarantee, but we are hopeful. We were able to get all of our power of attorney forms notarized, but one. This last one requires our passport numbers, which have not yet been issued. So that particular form will go ahead with the rest of our dossier. After an initial check to be sure everything looks okay with the forms we had notarized, we send them off to be apostilled. Apostilling is simply this: notarizing the notary in preparation to send out of country. Yes, I know - a little redundant. However, this is to make sure that our notary stamp is legit. Now, it is also a bit steep to get apostilling done; in our state it is $15/page! CRAZY! Oh, and by the way, in doing international adoptions - you need to be sure that the notary's stamp doesn't touch any lines or print, and that it does not expire within eighteen months of being notarized. I am learning so much during this process.
So ... one "thing" is checked off our looooong list of "to-do's", and now we are onto the next.