Our long awaited and anticipated day finally arrived on Friday, October 18!! We had our final court hearing scheduled for 11:00 a.m., in El Dorado, and we couldn't wait for the hearing to be finished so that Jaydon could finally be legally our own! On the way to the courthouse, we picked up my mom so she could join in on the adventure that we were about to take! :)
We arrived early at the courthouse just so that we wouldn't be in a rush once we arrived. We walked in and told the officers our names and what we were there for and he couldn't find our names on the docket (this happened with Adia's adoption as well). So we tried a couple of alternate names, and those didn't work to be found either. Praise the Lord our attorney was already there and was standing above looking down and told us who the judge was supposed to be. So we passed along that information to the officer who then asked who that was that had talked to us. When I said it was our attorney and gave his name, then the officer said it was alright to go through. So we had to go through the body scans, etc, to get everything and everyone safely passed through to go into the rest of the courthouse. We then went upstairs to where our attorney was, and waited there for a little while. He asked us when we met up with him if we were sure we wanted to do this. OF COURSE - YES!!!!! After we fed and changed Jaydon, we were then ushered further back into the courthouse, which only our attorney could help us enter. We then went into a waiting room, to wait for our judge.
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| This outfit seemed perfect for this special day! |
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| Waiting and trying to pass the time. This was the second waiting room of the three that we were in. |
It was definitely after 11:00, and we were still waiting. We were then told that the judge that was supposed to hear our case was gone and had forgotten to transfer our case to another judge. So....we had to wait for another judge to become available. (With Adia's adoption, we had to wait for a judge to become available as well!) We were then taken to yet another waiting room. We finally got to see the judge come by the waiting room and asks if we need to do this in the court room or if she and the attorney could just go into the office and sign all the papers. By this time, the kids were getting restless, so we were just ready to get this done! So I asked if we could take pictures when they were done signing and she said yes. So we let it go!
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| This was the room we waited in while the adoption was being finalized in another room. |
Looking back, I wish we would have gone ahead and said that we wanted it in the court room so that the kids could experience the whole thing, and also allow us to get the full adoption experience, but that wasn't meant to be. The judge went with the attorney around 11:20 a.m., or so to go sign. Once they were done, the judge came back with her robe on and she escorted us to her court room. She was an absolute blast and loved the kids and did very well with them. She even let the kids sit behind her desk and play judge. Not too many would do that!! But she loved it and loved being with the kids! We could not have asked for a better judge!
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| The family with the judge. | | |
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| The proud new parents! |
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| The judge loved Jaydon! |
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| She enjoyed kissing him and snuggling with him and even asked if she had to give him back. |
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| The "official" judge picture. |
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| Us with our attorney. |
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| Adia being the judge. |
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| Jonathan being the judge. |
After the finalization was all done, it was time to leave the courthouse in the pouring down rain. The rain would later turn to sleet and snow, but God graciously kept us all safe. I had hoped to get a picture of the courthouse, but due to the weather the picture we took when we finalized Adia's adoption there will need to do (hopefully I can find it). It was now time to celebrate and eat lunch! So we headed to where the kids could be their own pirates. :)
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| Pirate Adia |
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| Pirate Jonathan |
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The finalization may not have gone quite like how we pictured, but the end result was that Jaydon's name was officially changed and he legally became a part of our family forever! The realization of this didn't really hit until we were all loaded up and headed out for lunch. I think this was mostly because we kept moving from room to room and didn't really get a chance to settle anywhere for the emotions to truly hit. Once in the van though, there was a huge wave of relief and just a feeling that the burden of waiting for so many areas in our adoption journey was finally over!! We praise the Lord for his provision and for His working all the details out just the way HE wanted. On another day I will do a blog on some reflections of the journey and show you a picture of Mommy D, our precious birth mommy who is still searching.
