Apostilling in Illinois

Well apostilling in Illinois was pretty uneventful. I rolled up to the capitol and found the building with Jesse White's name all over it. (Illinois is going to have to spend a pretty penny someday when they need to scrape Jesse White's name off every DOT and secretary of state office.)

Anyway I did not actually meet Jesse White. The gal that did my apostilling widened her eyes when I started pulling papers out and didn't stop. 15 documents later she shuffled back to an undisclosed location. It took about an hour, but it was nicely air conditioned. Illinois only charged me 2 dollars per document for a grand total of 30 dollars. Don't tell them that they could charge 5 dollars like Iowa... they will probably raise it soon I'm sure.

I wisely (for once!) checked each document as I put it back in my organizer and found only one mistake. She had misspelled Champaign so she had to re-apostille one document for me. Once I was out to the car I also was spry enough to compare between Iowa and Illinois. I was pretty dismayed when I found that the date line was done differently between the two states. In Iowa they put the date of the original notarization. In Illinois they put the date of the apostille. Sooo... I went back inside to "double check" that they were done correctly. I was told Iowa must have made a mistake... "Hmmm...." was all I could say. I'm not the most tactful person and couldn't come up with the words to politely disagree and say it would seem more likely to be Illinois making the mistake... So I decided when in doubt to keep my mouth shut.

I was going to email my agency but I decided to just wait and see what they say. Perhaps within the next few weeks our agency will look over everything and let us know if there is anything that needs to be changed/redone. (I very much hope everything is found to be acceptable.)

Now that I am done chasing paperwork for awhile I started to think of what I should do. Then the thought struck me that after our paperwork gets to Colombia we could be parents of two toddlers any time! After some deep breathing to keep from passing out at that thought, I decided to make a list of all the "things" that need to be done before the children actually come. Then I realized I didn't know what toddlers really need besides sippy cups and tiny silverware... and continued the deep breathing and went online to reserve some parenting books. :)