It's Official!

Amidst a few tears and many smiles, we have finalized our little girl's adoption. Her therapist, social worker, and a dear foster mom came with us to the judge's chambers for the brief hearing.

Social worker Linsey, Dad, Mom, and therapist Sherry and former foster mom Deanna came came for Kyla's hearing.

Ohio family sent Build-A-Bear gift certificates, so afterwards Kyla picked out "Violet".

Violet plays soccer like Kyla--here's her uniform, complete with cleats!

It's the first anniversary...

...of the day K. came to live with us. We got up early so that I could do a special job on her hair for church. The congregation will have cake and ice cream today to celebrate her adoption. The hearing is scheduled for tomorrow morning.

I spoke with Jennifer, a-mom to K.'s sister. They will finalize her sister's adoption this Friday. We hope to bring the sibs together for a visit very soon, and this also includes an older brother living with extended family. Mark and I have not met this brother but we understand he is a great kid. Another brother lives out of town but will be with Aunt D. during Spring Break--we hope to meet him for a visit with K. when he is in town.

Call papers are in the mail, so Mark should be sharing the news with Council this week. We hate that it has taken so long to get this moving, as Mark can't share our news with our parishioners until we have those papers.

This afternoon our realtors are holding an open house. We hope that generates some interest.

As the big day approaches...

...our little K. is very fragile. She is excited and yet very nervous about meeting the judge as we finalize her adoption. She is happy and sad about moving. Mostly she talks about missing her friends and her birth sister. She cries very easily and wants to be picked up, held, comforted. Two days ago she cried her little eyes out when we told her basketball practice was cancelled. We knew she liked basketball, but this seemed like over-reacting. After we were able to calm her down she told us that she was going to miss playing with her best friend Lauren, the friend she will miss the most once we move. She doesn't want to be the new kid at school again...and she doesn't want to move.

Her therapist tells us that this is all good news--she wants to be comforted by us rather than turning away or acting out.

We had lunch with Aunt Debbie and Uncle Richard--Aunt D. is sister to her birth mom. It went fine--her aunt was loving and appropriate. K. sat next to me and was a bit shy with them at first, but she warmed up to them and was having fun by the end of the meal. We took pictures at the restaurant:

Aunt, Uncle, K.

Us with K.

Aunt Debbie was kind enough to bring some baby pictures and some family pictures. I scanned them that night and mailed them back the next day. She also brought small gifts from herself and from K.'s birth grandmother. I think Aunt Debbie can be a positive link to K.'s birth family, so I agreed to keep K. in touch with her over the years.

I did ask Aunt Debbie if she could again ask birth mom to write a nice a nice "goodbye" letter for K.. Birth Mom advised that she would ask her counselor for help, but I'm not getting my hopes up. I have also spoken with the counselor, asking if she would help if asked by Birth Mom (this counselor also saw K. when she was very young.) The counselor agreed to help if Birth Mom asked for help.

I was going to leave Kansas for Florida immediately after finalization in order to find a job quickly, but I think K. is just too fragile right now. I may go down as soon as we have a contract on the house...no bites yet, but we are hoping to see some activity soon due to open house and realtor tour.

We got the call!

The vote is in and it's official: Mark has been called by a church in Florida! The new church is less than five miles from Mom's condo. I suppose that means we will have to change the name of our homepage...

Our house is on the MLS now and we hope to get some calls for showings soon. I'm stressing out as we need to quickly sell the house... and I need to find a job down there. I've been talking to a recruiter who tells me that one of her clients is interested in my resume. I may drive down there and stay with Mom immediately after we finalize with K. in order to job-hunt and house hunt.

This is Mark's first call, so this is the first time he will be saying "goodbye" to a congregation. It's going to be hard for both of us--the people of the church have been wonderful. Hopefully they will understand that we need to be near Mom. I think it would have been much more difficult for them if we were leaving for another church within our synod or some other place...but they all know about her condition and understand our need to be near her.

So much to do!