Journey of the paperwork (and my excuse for missing small group)

If you are in small group with us, this is my excuse to you as to why you may not have had snacks last night.

With fingerprints FINALLY no longer an issue, our next step was getting paperwork turned in to our homestudy agency so that we could get our "big" meeting scheduled. 

The mister has furlough Fridays this month, so I decided that we'd do a "quick" excursion into the city to hand-deliver our paperwork, in hopes that I'd be able set up next week's meeting right then and there. It's important that we get it taken care of this next week, because I will be out of town next week to attend my sister's wedding. This is the only time we get this taken care of in June. So my poor husband agreed to skip out on fishing and instead let us go for a drive.

Who knew we'd get stuck in such a major traffic jam? Our fifty mile trip took over two hours; when we arrived, I bolted through the door, handed the office lady my paperwork, and told her I'd like to get the appointment scheduled... and she said, unfortunately, she can't do that. The lady who does that stuff had already left for the day. AARGH! Looks like I'll be taking care of it first thing Monday morning instead. Please pray that we are easily able to get this taken care of. This hurdle is taking far too long to cross!

Since we were downtown, I figured I'd check how near we were to the Shedd Aquarium (so that it didn't feel like a complete waste of hours when I could have just mailed it overnight instead.) We were very close, just 8 miles away, and we have a membership, so we thought we'd make a "quick" trip to see the fishes (my three boys love the shark exhibit in particular.) Well, good ol' Chicago... 8 miles took a full hour! We arrived, running inside, having just one hour until the Shedd closed. It actually worked out nicely, because the museum was fairly empty so we didn't have to deal with crowds. However, upon arriving it occurred to us that this was a Friday, meaning small group night with our church. Looking at the time, we realized there was absolutely no way we'd make it back in time, considering how long it was taking to get around the city to begin with. Oops, sorry guys. Mister couldn't find his cell phone, and we realized we were in charge of bringing snacks, so we were feeling pretty terrible the whole time. Then, as soon as we left, he realized the cell was in his pocket all along, so we were able to call a friend in the group and let him know of the absence of our family (and, maybe more importantly, the snacks.) 

Sorry, small groupers, for flaking out on you! We'll make it up, we promise!