I forgot to update the other day. The notary came through and I was able to pick up our certified copies of our passports about an hour after my last post. To say I was impressed is an understatement! It's Monday and we still have no word about our translations, unfortunately. I was really hoping to be able to get them today and send them to Koln this afternoon! This is the last week of Kindergarten for DJ (ever!!) and L. After that, we have 3 weeks of "summer break". This is all well and good, except that I still have to make a trip to the embassy in Frankfurt for the final Authentication. I was REALLY expecting to be able to do that one morning while they were in school. Taking N to an embassy for a lengthy legal process didn't rank high on "fun factor", but taking all 3? Well, that's almost as pleasant as a root canal..... at least they give you pain meds for the root canal! ;-) It looks like D might have to take the morning/day off of work to come with us just to help with them. To be fair, when we went to the US Embassy, they did much better than expected but kids and endless bureaucracy just don't mix and this time we will be adding a potential language barrier. Heck, I might just see if I can leave them home with D while I go by myself!
Speaking of getting to the embassy, our van is having some issues. D said when he was driving it home from church Thursday night, it shifted really rough and the check engine light came on. The light has gone away and it now drives ok, except that we seem to have "lost" our top gear. In the US, this wouldn't be a problem. Here with the Autobahn, though, it is. 120 km/h is our top speed without really pushing the rpms higher than we want. (In case you're curious, that's 75 mph) Typing that makes me a little glad to have such a problem. In the US if we couldn't make it over 75 mph, we would hardly notice! Here, we have to stay close to home where there are speed limits (100 and 130 mainly). If we venture into the "fun" territory, we're liable to get rear-ended if we try to pass anybody and we don't want to be stuck behind a semi who can only go 90. Oh, and then there's that thing about not wanting the problem to get worse. The frustrating thing is that the transmission has been on my worry list since the day we brought the van home last September. I'm going to take it to the place we bought it tomorrow for them to take a look at it and see if they can find (and fix!) the problem. I really hope it's something simple like a sensor or something and not the whole transmission! I also hope they don't expect us to pay much for it since we told them about our concerns immediately after we brought it home. I don't mind paying some, but we'll see what happens.....
In other "news"..... my expectations were really put into place this weekend. For some bizarre reason, I was thinking/hoping that we would be able to travel in around 2-3 months. Our placing agency would never give me even a rough estimate, probably because they cannot guarantee anything and didn't want to get my hopes up. I just wanted a general guess so I could know whether or not we might be able to go to Disney for L's birthday or whether I can make it to my BFF's wedding and tentatively figure out who might be able to watch the kids for us while we go to Crescent Moon. They finally told me that once our Dossier makes it to Crescent Moon, it will likely still be 4-6 months before we travel because they have to translate and review it first, then we have to do our I-800, etc. That was not a good thing to read. I have assumed we were going to be travelling around September pretty much this entire time. That was my initial thought and I got some vague confirmation from Dr. A and one of the people at our placing agency (WAY back before our home study dilemma, of course) It had never occurred to me that we might not get to travel this fiscal year (which ends Halloween) or worse, that we may not be able to bring Z home for Christmas! I am hoping that things go much quicker than expected, of course. Maybe we can get her over Christmas break. That would save a lot of D's vacation time and we would have plenty of family available to help watch the kids for us. And, what better Christmas present for any of us?! I will say this though....I do NOT want to wait until her 5th birthday at the end of February to get her! That is just TOO far away! I am sure that we'll start to have a better guesstimate of when we'll get to travel as we get closer to that day. I just wish we could know now! I'm trying really hard to just let it go and trust that God knows when He wants us to get her. He seems to be delaying things pretty often, so there must be a reason.
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