Much ado about fingerprinting

Hey friends!

At the end of the day, we had our fingerprints taken, but that's just the end of the story. Y'all wouldn't believe what took place at the beginning. I'm going to tell you, just for the shear sake of documentation.

(I feel like I need to say, "once upon a time" or something, but I won't....this is no fairy tale, but it does have a happy ending)

It was Friday night, and Brad & I were just getting in to bed, talking about our upcoming day. We had to be in Atlanta at 8:00 AM, but the kids were with my sister, so we had the rest of the day in the ATL to do whatever we wanted. We had thought about staying overnight somewhere nice. But, instead, decided to spend the money on some home improvement projects; so we were mapping out (in our mind, not literally on paper) all the shops and stores and restaurant possibilities. We were really looking forward to the time to spend together, and were excited about the prospect of having all day and evening to do whatever our hearts desired. What luxury!! I was beginning to think that our earlier snafu had been a blessing in disguise.

But then the phone rings. Don't you hate a late night call.....ugh!! It was Brad's work, and someone had made some programming changes that had literally shut down 20 manufacturing plants. Needless to say, it was a huge deal. Poor Brad had to work very literally ALL NIGHT long. Somewhere in the middle of the night he had dealt the blow that it was not going to be possible for him to leave work at 6:00 in the morning. He told me to go on ahead and take his forms with me to reschedule him. There is not much you can say or do when your employer is having a major manufacturing outage and you can fix it. Obviously, I was disappointed.

I left the house around 5:30 (they are doing construction around Kennesaw and I wasn't sure if it would cause a delay) and on the way down I was telling God how disappointed I was. Some might call it whining, I prefer to think of it as......um.......being honest with my disappointment- there, doesn't that sound better? In all honesty, I really don't think I was whining. I wasn't mad. I was just bummed. Yet again, something was preventing us from accomplishing this seemingly easy task and it was taking a much needed 'date time' with my husband down with it. In my mind I was also wondering how difficult it was going to be to reschedule, and if it would get lost in the shuffle. I was also afraid that it would create problems if Brad and I had different expiration dates.

Anyway, Brad called while I was still driving down and he said that I should ask them if he could still be fingerprinted as long as he made it down there some time that day. He seemed to think that he could leave (for an hour or so) later on that morning. I felt it was a long shot, but when I got there, I asked, and much to my surprise the answer was yes (as long as he got there before 3 PM.)

Luckily, Brad was able to leave around 8:30 or so and he met me in Kennesaw (remember, I had his forms) then went on down to the processing office, and then went straight back to work. And, since I was already down there (and without kids) I decided to hang around and go to all my favorite shops.

In the end, all that suffered was our time alone.....Oh, and maybe my sanity for a few hours. But, it's all good. The kids won't be back until Thursday, and Brad will definitely be taking some comp time, so our 'day' is coming.

Don't you just love a happy ending? Lord knows I do. - Thank you Jesus!

Fairly soon, I should be posting about our new approval!