WE HAVE A DATE!!!!!!!!

Woke up (a mite early) to an email from our facilitator saying that our appointment date is January 21 at 2:00 pm. Wahooo! A little later than we expected. But very do-able, especially to be able to get past holidays and birthdays. This is all getting so real (or surreal?!?!)

We have touchdown!

We got word this morning that our dossier has been submitted. Wahooo!! We got word yesterday that within the last week the SDA had changed their format for the housing verification. Instead of a (on the letterhead, notarized, apostilled) paper with information about your loan they needed to have a paper (of course, on the letterhead, notarized and apostilled) from the county assesor/ appraiser that tells about the house (how many rooms of what type, square footage, ect). We were told we could still submit if we hurried and got that and sent it. So I drove to the county yesterday morning. They were VERY cooperative!!! The worker there typed up a page just like the sample that I made for her, signed it had the notary sign it and even made copies for my records for me. Then the notary took me down the hall and introduced me to a lady who works there who is from Ukraine. So after a quick trip to the state secretary's place to get it apostilled I had the paper ready to send. After DHL's fiasco our facilitator told us to us FedEx. Well, they said they would take 10 days to get it there AND they had to put a value on it (the very thing that held up our dossier). After some haggling the FedEx lady said that in her system we could put $1 and on the paperwork that stays on the envelop we could put 00 NCV (no commercial value). We decided to call our facilitator to make sure that and the 10 day thing was ok. So after calling our phone plan to add cheaper international long distance I called him (hoping I wouldn't be waking him up). He was very gracious and assured me that it was ok they always said that and usually got it there very quickly. So by 11:00 am it was in the mail and once again we are back to waiting.
Apparently, people are getting appointments 1 week after submission (as opposed to the 3 weeks they are allowed by law) and some people are getting appointments within two weeks (or less) of their notification of appointment. So now we are a little stressed about getting everything ready to go.