ADOPTION UPDATE: Frankly, not much rattles us anymore...

[whew] It started to look bad there, yesterday. Our visa rep (the Assistant Stork's husband, Steve) went to the Kazakh Embassy to pick up our visas, and whoops! no visa. Seems the Ministry of Education had given our confirmation number to Marina, but hadn't yet gotten around to sending it to the embassy. Since there's a one-day turnaround, and this was already Thursday, that pretty much means no visa 'til Monday, right? And our tickets are for Sunday night, so isn't it time to panic?

Ah, but we've been here before. Those of you who were along for the wild ride that was our 2003 adoption, may remember that pretty much exactly the same thing happened to us then. But the folks at the Assistant Stork get along very well with the Kazakhs at the embassy, which is one of the reasons you pay them to handle all that visa stuff instead of doing it yourself. We remember quite clearly that in 2003, Steve actually went to the embassy on a day when it was nominally closed to the public, and the visa dude made out two visas while he waited, and we made our flight. In fact, back then it didn't even faze anybody to discover that the embassy was temporarily out of the adoption visas we were supposed to have -- Mr. Embassy Dude simply took a transit visa, marked out the original number, scribbled a new number in by hand, gave it to Steve and said firmly, "Tell them not to let anyone give them any trouble." And we made it to Kazakhstan and came back with Sally and Rusty.

So the news that the registration number hadn't gotten there in time, hardly discombobulated us at all. Why waste energy getting upset when it'll probably work out anyway? And sure enough, about an hour or so Dessie called me: the embassy had received the number this morning, and once again, Mr. Embassy Dude had made out our visas while Steve waited.

So I just really don't see anything else, assuming FedEx doesn't let Tom Hanks fly the plane tonight, to keep us from getting on our own plane come Sunday.

I want to say again that we've been absolutely flooded with supportive e-mails, and while I intend to personally answer every one, here's a great big general-purpose thank-you to all of you in case I haven't thanked you individually yet.

UPDATE: I've heard more of the story from The Boss. It seems that Steve got to the embassy and the first thing Mr. Visa Dude said was, "Our system is down and I can't issue any visas."

"Uh-oh," thought Steve, "guess that does it for the Pierces." But then Mr. Visa Dude remembered something.

"Actually, I did get one visa issued early this morning before the system went down, because we had been warned to look for this family's visa in particular. Are you looking for the visas for the Baker family?"

For a moment hope had risen, but only to be dashed again. "No," said Steve regretfully, "I need visas for the Pierces."

"Oh, yes, that's right, the Pierces, that was it!"

You know how it is...all those American names sound alike.

But we got our visa, and we no longer have any doubt that we're meant to go to Kazakhstan. So off we go, Sunday night at 4:30 in the afternoon.

This adoption update was preceded by this one and is followed by this one.