This dog is lucky to still be in the family...

Well, we received our Visa's back from the Chinese Consulate on Tuesday.  Felt good to have this taken care of and checked off the list.  Had a few extra minutes last night and thought I would organize the paperwork we have to take with us to China - oh, the paperwork never seems to end. Man do I wish I hadn't decided to do this.  I bought this great flexible accordion file folder to keep our papers organized, and had piles of papers spread out on our table, working down the list of documents our agency has us take...7 copies of each passport signature page, 3 copies of each visa page, extra passport photos, copies of our tax returns, copy of Matthew's Chinese & English referral files...the list doesn't seem to end.  I had most of it finished and needed to clear the table for dinner, so I set aside my awesome new accordion file.  Well our little Ethan thought the accordion file was pretty awesome too - he loved hooking and unhooking the elastic band. I'm pretty sure it was during his playing around that IT happened.

See that adorable furry face?  Good things she is cute because we had to keep her from being given her walking papers.  I was fixing dinner when Ella said Baylee was eating the "passwords" (we still chuckle at her choice of words sometimes).  What?  Yep, she had chewed the corner of one of the passports - and it was Chris'.  He took it better than I thought, but he certainly wasn't happy.  I flew into crisis management mode - called the 24 hr appointment scheduling number for Chicago (had that handy because we had just been there last week to get Andrew's passport).  Someone must have been looking over us, because they had a 12:30 appointment next day - that never happens.  Chris flew to Walgreens to get new passport photos taken (told him to get an extra set just in case).  Got the application printed out again, and tried to figure out what we needed to do about the Visa.  Chris made a flying trip to Chicago early this morning, and things went off without a hitch.  Meanwhile, I was frantically working out what to do with about his Visa.  The consensus was that we needed to get it reissued - fastest and safest route - apply for a new Visa (not the most economic solution, but nothing about this day has been economical).  I still had his visa application saved on my computer - updated it with his new passport number and emailed it off to Chris, along with information on how to overnight it to the courier.  He still had an extra passport photo with him, and we found a Fedex office just 5 minutes from the Passport office.  He was able to print the application there with no problems.  Like I said, someone was looking over us.  It went flawlesss - visa is on its way to the courier to drop off to the Consulate.  Now we just wait.  Well, wait and watch out for Baylee - if she finds it on the floor, she's sure she needs to chew it.