Our Letter Building Party

Just a quick note...kinda.
We finally got the email we've been waiting for...our letter has been accepted! Finally. When I got home, Gregg was preparing all the final paperwork. I went off to Staples to get the 125 copies of the letter we needed. Thank goodness I had the girl run off one copy first, even though I already knew what it was going to look like from last week's test run. On both sides you could see a faint line cutting the paper in half. I asked the woman, is this my file, or from the printer? "Oh it's our printer it's been doing that" was the response. "125 right?" Um, no. I can't believe it was no big deal to her. How many customers left there today with imperfect print jobs. Well, I needed 130 copies of our main picture, and I dropped them at Wal-mart before I went to Staples. Now I know what you're thinking. If I'm gay about anything, it's Wal-mart. I hate that store. It's just so...Wal-marty. But the digital prints they make are the nicest of anywhere, much nicer then Target, and believe me, I tried to prove to myself that Target's would be better. They're not. It takes an hour for them to finish, so I went to Office Max. Yes, the same one from the business card drama. The one where nobody has a clue what they are doing. After the woman took my flash drive, I had to wait 40 minutes for them to get to me. It then took another 45 to get the job printed because they didn't know how to get the printer to do both sides. I let them play with it while I went to get the pics from Wal-mart. They were just about done when I got back. The woman was so apologetic, then asked me to explain Open Adoption to her because she can't have kids of her own. So we had a nice conversation. Then came the dreaded moment...ringing this stuff up.
"OK, 125 double sided color copies on 85 pound photo cardstock...that's $160.19. Boy sure adds up huh?"
"Well yeah, but honestly I thought it would be more then that."
"Oh it is."
"It is?" Great. More coming.
"Well normally it is. But I feel bad you had to wait so long. And I'm sure adoption is expensive. So I only charged you for one side."
Wow. A $160 discount. My cheapness was doing the happy dance to 3 AM techno music inside my chest. Boo-ya! What a nice lady...guess she just saved a customer!

When I got home, we got out the white paint pens, the glue sticks, and the letters and pics (well and a couple glasses of wine) and started letter building. Paste the main picture on the front, use the paint pens to sign our names on the blue Thanks For Reading Our Letter part, and almost 3 hours later, Voila, birth mother letters!

I took some pics, of course my digital camera decided to kill it's battery now so I had to take them with an actual film camera. Geez. I might as well write this blog on a typewriter and carrier pigeon it to my readers! (The one that goes to Michelle in Guam won't be happy LOL.) Once they're developed, I'll post them.

But tomorrow we mail the letters...finally. We won't make the books this Friday, there's more drama to tell, but we'll be there next week for sure. I'll share the rest of the story tomorrow, right now bedtime.

Good luck letters...find your way to Finster!