A Wonderful Day !!

Wed 3 September 2008 will be one of those days we never forget, like:

Feb 18, 2000 Claire was born

Nov 14, 2000 Claire's adoption was final

Feb 5, 2008 Aspen was born

Sept 3, 2008 Aspen's adoption became final!!

Claire was so excited last night. I asked her to pick out a dress to wear and clothes to change into after. She looked through every dress in her closet and chose the dress she wore when she was baptised. She said she can't look at her baptism dress without thinking about Aspen because Aspen was born right before Claire was baptised. She insisted on wearing it to school that morning. I took Claire out of school mid-morning so she could come with us to Aspen's hearing. We met with our lawyer at the County Courthouse at 1130 am and proceeded up to the judge's chambers. We had to wait for the judge to finish up with the case before ours, which was nice so we could sit and relax for several minutes. Then the judge had us meet in his courtroom instead of his chambers.

Our lawyer had David, Aspen and myself sit at a table up front, then he had us raise our right hands and swore us in and then he proceeded to present Aspen's adoption petition. Our lawyer turns to us and asks us: "Do each of you desire to adopt Aspen as your very, very own?" ("Yes, Yes" of course we say.) "Your honor, we respectfully submit this adoption for finalization.." Then a short time later the judge hits his gavel to the bench and says, "She's yours". And there you have it.

Claire really wanted to go back to school (she's a dedicated student). I had her change into the clothes she put in her backpack before returning to school and she put on a tee-shirt I recently gave her that says "Adoption Rocks!!" We couldn't agree more!

The day Claire's adoption was finalized 8 years ago, a good friend of ours made us an apple pie to celebrate after. In keeping with tradition, he made one to celebrate Aspen's finalization today too! Here is a photo of the apple pie and the pie sitting on a table covered with tin foil and we were trying to take a photo, but Aspen only had eyes for the shiney tin foil...

Two of our friends were able to join us today in the courtroom. Our lawyer told us we would be meeting in the judges chambers so we could only invite 2 people, but had we known we'd end up in the courtroom, I think we might have tried to fill every seat! It was a wonderful, wonderful, sweet experience.

Claire insisted on bringing her camera and she made a video of a few moments of the court proceedings, of which I have posted a few seconds of that below. One of our friends video taped the whole thing with our camcorder, but I need to transfer that to digital format. So I was tickled that Claire filmed a bit of the hearing, we hope you enjoy watching it. I was looking at the photos that were taken during the hearing, and realized there was this big policeman standing there by us the whole time, I was completely oblivious to that fact earlier as I was otherwise occupied.


Aspen was a jewel through the whole thing, she sat still, and didn't make a peep. She just sat on my lap, looking around and absorbing what was going on around her and smiling her cute little grin. We are truly, without doubt, so blessed to have the honor of being parents to our 2 daughters.

We love you all!