FINALIZATION!!!

IT really, finally happened. In fact, tomorrow it will be 2 weeks to the day that Judge Kate Toomey pronounced us a family. THANK GOD!!!!

It has taken me this long to even process the day, the proceedings, the flat tire when we got back to the parking lot, the well wishers who stopped by for cold Chinese food that evening, the gifts, the love, the friends, the Little Black Dress outfit E looked so cute in, the photographer, the women in my life who drove in the nasty weather and paid the parking fee to witness the proceedings...and shared tears of joy with me, Cassie pulling her boys out of school early and getting them dressed in "court attire", the text msg from my sister, the voicemail from Annie, the matching outfits that Chloe & Rory wore, the big zit on my chin, the joke the attorney told in the elevator...twice, the way the judge looked at us, the comment Rory made as we left the courtroom (we really get to keep her mom?), the way my heart felt when I thought of her birth mom that day (and right now), the compound under construction, the social worker making her firm recommendation that E should be ours, the way the big girls looked sitting in the judge's chair for pictures (you girls have choices, options...take the world by storm!), the approving laughter by the judge when she walked into the courtroom and saw E on James' lap, the way James looked at me as I started to cry at the sheer surrealness of it all, the look on the attorney's face as I handed him a thank you note with E's pix in it to thank him for his part in our journey, snuggling on my couch with good friends at the end of the crazy day, and most of all the overwhelming feeling of gratitude. Grateful we made it through 6 months of what if's. Grateful that everyone that was meant to be there was and those that couldn't were here in spirit. Grateful for my husband. Grateful for my girls. Grateful that God picked me...picked us....to have little E as part of our family....

I am going to upload all 91 pix on kodak gallery if interested, but want to say thanks for following along with me on this crazy road of adoption. Until the next dream....big hugs-S