A Decorated D-Day Veteran

My g-pa is in the background, next in line

As DDay memorials are taking place all over the world today, I wanted to point out one man who was among the dreadful front line - my grandfather, Jack Horton.

suggested reading: The Greatest Generation (Tom Brokaw)

Authenticating in NY - oops!

NY Supreme Court, 60 Centre St, NYC

To any NY'ers out there authenticating your dossier on your own, you may want to take note of this...

Alert #1: Your docs do NOT go directly to your Secretary of State. We found this out when our entire packet was returned to us last week. New York law requires your packet go through the NY County Clerk's office PRIOR to reaching the SOS.

So rather than wasting more mail-time, with packet in hand I hit the subway yesterday and headed downtown to the land of Law & Order. (If you're patient, you can wait while they do it). And I'm very glad I did this in person b/c another mystery was uncovered in the process.

Alert #2: New York consists of Queens (Queens) County, Kings (Brooklyn) County and New York (Manhattan) County. Well, even though all of our NY docs were notarized in Manhattan, they can't all be processed by the NY Cty Clerk's office. The reason is b/c a notary's stamp is valid where they LIVE, not work. The small type on a few of our notarys' stamps listed Kings Cty and Queens Cty, meaning they don't live in Manhattan. This nugget of info was not on our radar when notarizing our docs months ago. These docs can't be processed through the NY County Clerk's office.

Lesson learned. At this point, it's more time efficient for us to have the docs re-notarized by a notary living in Manhattan and return to the New York County Clerk's office, rather than schlepping off to find the offices in Queens & Brooklyn.

So once this is done, I will definitely be presenting our completed packet in person to the Secretary of State. We can't lose anymore time. I have already confirmed that the other states (NV, PA, DC, WV, NJ) currently reviewing our packets, do not require processing through their County Clerks' offices.

Operation Column Five: Check

Yes, that's right folks. Column five has been completed since we last spoke. What does that mean exactly?

It means that the secretary of state (SOS) in each state we had a document notarized, is about to receive their respective documents from us. They will then approve (aka authenticate) them as legit in their state by applying their SOS seal.

Column six is a big one too. As we get our authenticated docs returned from each state, we'll hold onto them until all are in hand. They will then be submitted to Gladney who will include our home study and final docs on their end. That ladies and gentleman is what compiles a dossier.

This dossier is then forwarded to Ethiopia for review. At that point, we are officially on The Wait List. That will be a very big day in the Horton/Gittens household. V.E.R.Y.

In other news, I took a personal day today to wait for a man to fix a pothole in front of our house and catch up on life in general. By 10:30am, I had returned from the nursery with cilantro, basil, five tomato plants, mint, oregano, a red pepper plant and a yellow pepper plant. Four of the tomato plants went in the backyard with the remaining goodies on the balcony. I'm trying to work my way up to grapes, blueberries and eggplant (maybe next season if this lot makes it).

The remaining part of my day will consist of an amazing project I'm working on, in part with Gladney. Months ago I read about an older girls orphanage in Ethiopia that fosters girls up to the standard age for orphans. The topic being, then what? What are these girls suppose to do then? They've had no parents, no life-skills/guidance, little (if any) education and now are so stunted in their preparation to handle the real world. Gladney has a Brighter Futures program which was started in order to assist these girls with said life skills.

I contacted the (amazing) woman in their NY office heading the humanitarian efforts, told her about my background & that I had a few ideas and would love the opportunity to meet with her.

A lot has happened since that meeting, which I'll post another time - all very exciting and positive stuff. So, I'm off to work on some necklace designs.

Now...where is this pothole man? And why do I assume he is a man? That is unusually and very politically incorrect of me.

Six Years Ago Yesterday...

50+ of our closest friends and family flew to Las Vegas, threw on a costume and attended our wedding at Canterbury Chapel followed by loads of dancing, eating and celebrating at the reception.

15 years ago (on Halloween, not yesterday), Kai asked me on a date.

We've come a long way since then. On our date last night we pondered where and what we will be doing on our 25th anniversary. I'm putting it in writing (and wondering what form 'blogging' will morph into by then) to formally note that we simultaneously said "living in Spain". That would be a fabulous way to spend our 25th Anniversary - and of course you're all invited! (costumes optional)

The Dossier Checklist

This is the chart we've created to keep us sane right now. It's our tracking device as our dossier docs leave our hands and travel on to our caseworker, followed by the Secretaries of State, only to make their way back to us with a stamp of approval. At that time, we will repackage them and off they go to Ethiopia!

Authenticating One's Own Dossier

In unrelated news: First modern trauma center opens in Ethiopia

In your dossier packet, you will see an opt-in service offered by KBS Dossiers. This is run by a woman who has gone through the international adoption process herself and now offers her services (for a fee) to families reaching the authentication stage. It's always a topic of discussion on blogs and forums, Is this stage so daunting that I am better off paying someone to do it for me?

The answer is relative to your personality and lifestyle. We chose to do it ourselves for a few reasons:

1) we wanted to be hands-on and familiar w/ all documents being processed on our behalf through the US and Ethiopian gov'ts

2) we're very organized and knew we could handle it

3) we have an amazing agency who we knew we could call if we got stuck

4) based on the above, this was one expense we could pass on

In a nutshell, all the docs you were required to gather and notarize from the beginning are sent to your country-specialist caseworker who will review them for: language (keep it simple for translation purposes later), dates of your sigs matching dates of various notary sigs, all notary stamps are valid for two more years (so your docs don't expire) and a few other points that could raise red flags.

Once your caseworker gives the okay on the above, these docs are required to be authenticated by the Secretary of State (as mentioned in the previous post). This is where you have the option of hiring KBS Dossiers.

If you're on the fence, this may help a bit...

Kai and I spent most of this morning writing our cover letters (for WV, NV, PA, DC, NJ and NY), compiling the docs, folders, their return packets, labels and checks from approximately 8:30am - 2:30pm. We had a few questions, which we emailed to our caseworker. Once we hear from her, we will probably have another three hours remaining.

Its tedious work. If you can't be bothered, just want it done or have very little time - I highly recommend KBS. If you don't mind doing the legwork and want to save yourself a few bucks ($250-$650), I say do it yourself. In the end, your caseworker will be reviewing the final product before it's sent to Ethiopia anyway so it's really a decision of personal preference.

Pre-Dossier

Rural Ethiopian village in Benishngule Western Ethiopia.

So, our Ethiopia caseworker reviewed the documents we've gathered for our dossier submission. She returned to us a checklist of which items are headed back to the drawing board.

It's not so bad.

We've been on it all night and now have our newest folder prepared with proper documents; all adjusted, updated and ready for our new bff, the notary.

The silver lining...the majority of our first packet of docs submitted got the "Looks Good" stamp, meaning they will be headed to their respective Secretaries of State to be authenticated. A fair estimate on turnaround time (from online research) is two weeks, but some have been sooner. We're hoping to begin that process as early as Tuesday.

Our next milestone is getting on the wait list. While we're crossing our fingers for that, we're sending positive thoughts to all the families currently waiting and going through court.

On a side note, we're headed to my brother's house at the Jersey Shore for Memorial Day weekend so this may be our last post for this week. My mother and stepfather are in town to check out new-baby-Theo, so it'll be great to see them while we're there. And a big fat seafood dinner Saturday night on the boardwalk...yum :)

This will be a nice little break before jumping back into our to-do list first thing Tuesday morning.

Happy Memorial Day weekend to all!