Just A Girl's Musings: A New Year That's Happy

I can't believe that it is January 5, 2012. I don't feel like Christmas has even arrived let alone that we are already 5 days into the new year. I remember as a child I felt like time stood still. Adults would ramble on about how fast time flew and I thought they were just crazy. Now, I wish on a hundred pennies that I could slow down time.

So let's go back and do some updates.

We were thrown some last minute curveballs but at 4pm on the day before our adoption hearing, I could have been seen leaving the local police stations. Our paperwork had all been ready for months and we were just waiting until we could file the petition to adopt. We filed and our lawyer felt we had a great chance of getting a wiaver on the 6 month residency policy and that we would finalize by the end of 2011. Well, I called to make sure that everything looked right (ALWAYS FOLLOW UP! ALWAYS! If there is anything I learned in this process, it is that you have to follow up and make sure that every step is taken!) A frantic legal aide explained to me that we might have to cancel our hearing because one piece of paperwork was outdated. This was not just *any* paper- it was our background check. Apparently Texas has a law that the background check cannot be older than 1 year at the time of adoption. Had we known this we would have used the 5 months to complete a new one and been ready with time to spare. But, as things often happen in a system as big as the state foster/adopt system, someone dropped the ball and we could never figure out exactly where. It didn't matter to me who dropped the ball, but the fact that we weren't going to finalize in 2011 crushed us for many reasons.

1. We planned a huge surprise Adoption party while we were visiting my family in AZ. My mom found the most perfect Cabbage Patch Kids dolls for our kids. Cabbage Patch Dolls are adopted and come with an adoption decree. We wanted to be able to talk about how special that they were adopted and we had our decree and now these little CP kids were too.

2. The tax credit vs the tax refund-- or whatever it is called. It is entirely different in 2011 than in 2012. I don't even know all the little differences but we were told if we could finalize by the end of 2011 do everything we could.

3. Our kids wanted to be able to start 2012 knowing they never had to say they were not officially adopted. It had been a REALLY long 5 year haul for them.

4. As much as we love our adoption worker the monthly visits were hard to fit in and just were constant reminders that we were different and we still had unfinished business.

So with these things running through my mind and with minutes until the Texas office closed for business, I called every police station in the general vacinity to see who could do at least a local background check for us. As it turns out, they could only do one for our little tiny small towns. I took both of those and ran and faxed them to our attorney. He was not convinced that the judge would accept these but decided to carry the case forward. I can truly tell you that we finalized ONLY because of the Grace of God!

It became official on December 14, 2011 that our children were legally mine. Yep, mine. Nope, that's not a typo... Texas would only allow one of us to finalize and does not support same sex couple adoption. Our attorney submitted all the paperwork and once we receive that in the next 10 weeks or so, we can persue Kara adopting as their second parent. One additional step in the process, but it allowed up to all start 2012 knowing that forever we are a family. That is a joyous decree, indeed!

OK, so moving on to our vacation...

We had a great time in Arizona. The weather was perfect and my grandparents from back east flew in for the occassion. It was perfect. We had our Adoption Party, Christmas celebration, and still made it back to celebrate the New Year with all four of us dressed in our feeted Pajamas and playing board games as we rang in the new year at 9pm!