Monday, May 3, 2010

Court date!!!

I've been going crazy for a few weeks trying to get our lawyer to pin down a court date. It was coming "any day now" for quite a while. Finally I got her on the phone this morning and got her to call the court house and this afternoon I got a call back with a date!!

On Tuesday, May 18, Clarissa will officially, legally be ours forever. I am SO excited I can hardly stand it!! I've been waiting for this day for a really long time. No more checkups from the agency, no more post placement reports, we can finally change her name on our insurance and other things to Clarissa instead of her Korean name...she's finally going to be OURS! :)

On that day we will be signing paperwork to become her parents, we'll legally change her name to Clarissa Rose and she'll become an American citizen. Big day!! It's kind of a tradition among the families on the adoption message board I post on to wear red, white and blue to the courthouse to celebrate her American citizenship so I'm already planning our wardrobe. :) I bought Clarissa the cutest blue and white sailor dress. There will be many pictures that day, I'm sure!

Oh! And speaking of pictures, after May 18th I can finally start posting photos of her on my blog! Yay!

So today is a good day. I've had a grin on my face all afternoon. I can finally see the end of the adoption process and it feels GOOD.

I was just going through our gigantic binder of adoption paperwork, looking back to get a date of when we started this process. The earliest date I could find on paperwork from our agency was August 17, 2007. That was after we received the info packet from them though, which was at least a few weeks earlier. For some reason I can't find the welcome letter that came with our info packet.

But anyway, it looks like we officially started the adoption process around the first part of August, 2007. We were still in the thinking, praying and researching stage for at least a month before that though. I'm guessing that adoption came into our lives around June-July 2007. That was almost three years ago! Since then it has been a daily topic of conversation in our house, constantly on my mind, the subject of my blog, the cause of many tears and has pretty much consumed much of my life. I honestly have a hard time remembering what it was like before this whole thing started!

So to think about it coming to and end is really kind of weird. I'm still amazed that we're actually here. When we started the process the end seemed so far away.

But here we are and the day actually HAS come. When we started the process I hoped and prayed that it would be a positive experience in our lives and it has been-times a hundred! Our family is happy and complete and Clarissa is everything we could possibly have hoped for and more. I still get teary eyed every now and then when I see her playing with her brothers or when she gives me a hug or a slobbery kiss or when I hear her sweet giggle. She's real and she's ours. Amazing.

8 comments:

~April~ said...

YAY!!!

KrisJ said...

So so exciting!! I cant wait to see pictures!

Misty said...

So exciting! So happy for you!!! Yay!!!

Dustin, Darci, Britton, Benjamin, & Caden said...

Hooray! Congratulations!

Dustin, Darci, Britton, Benjamin, & Caden said...

Hooray! Congratulations!

Tara said...

Congratulations!!!! So happy for you and your family.

Pam said...

Sooo excited for you! A family member has adoped two boys domestically and the first took 18 months to finalize. The second only took about 3 months. I understand this is a big day for your family.
BTW, the Judge that did the finalization on the second child said those cases made her job worthwhile. She mainly does divorces and custody and these adoptions just make her day.

happyseoul said...

Yea, looking forward to lots of pictures! So happy for all of you.