And So the Saga Continues...

of our paperchase that is!!

I'd love to say I have good news and that things are moving along quite well. The reality is that we're still waiting, but most everything is moving along.. except for one stubborn document.
You'd think that it'd be the I-171h or the authentication process that would be causing all of our headaches.. but in really, it's my parent's marriage license!! A marriage license! Here's the story:
Four years ago when we were paperchasing for Emma, Mom ordered two copies of their marriage license for the dossier. It turned out that we'd only need one copy for the dossier, so when Esther came along in 2005, we used the other one for her dossier. So, when Asher came along right before Thanksgiving, the first thing we did was order birth certificates and marriage licenses since that would be the easy part. However, in Maryland, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene only has marriage licenses up until the year of 1991. Mom & Dad were married in 1988. So, off to the Maryland State Archives we went and after three weeks, they finally sent us what looked like a copy of a filed marriage license. It didn't look anything like the ML we had from our last adoptions but our agency said as long as the Secretary of State certified it, it would be fine. Well, everything arrived back from the MD Secr. of State last week, and the marriage license was certified,so we thought it was alright off it went to the US Department of State. (Mom's birth certificates went as well since she was born in Maryland.) Today, our documents came back authenticated, except for the marriage license.
After a headache of a day and frantic calls to anyone we could think of, we've realized that the Secretary of State made a mistake when they certified the document since it had never been signed by the Head of the Department of Health. That's why the State Department wouldn't certify it.
So, a letter has gone out to an office in Maryland where they are supposed to issue a marriage license for my parents. Please pray that they send us the *correct* document and that we can get it certified without a problem. Who'd have thought that our biggest headache would be a silly marriage license???

Other than that, everything else is moving along just fine.