Today was an adoption day in our family!

It’s been a long time coming. Still, I was surprised when it all seemed to go off without a hitch. No stop-ups! Not any major ones at least.

We left a little before 6am this morning.
All showered, cleaned, hair fixed up, breakfasted.
(This is a feat for my kids. It’s monumental for the mom!! I’m NOT a morning person!)
Three vehicles packed full of children -
all the way through one city in rush hour morning traffic -
to the next city 2hrs away that was then having their rush hour traffic.
In this next city (“city of adoption”) the three vehicles split up and each goes to a different RTC to pick up one of our kiddos there.
We meet at the courthouse. I'm only 20 minutes late! (Luckily, they didn't call our name until I was already the parking lot, so my husband held the door for me and the rest of us rushed in.)

We ended up with a great judge, one who has known our family for years and gone to bat for us in all of our "big cases". The five little adoptees sat up at the table and had the cutest, shiniest clean faces. They had HUGE grins, but would only nod to the judge's questions - no speech there.

There was one part that wasn’t as happy as the others:
We all wore white shirts for our studio photos afterward - but decided not to put John's on him until we got to the studio in an attempt to keep it as clean as possible. (He was one of the children we picked up from an RTC on the way to court. He has many issues, but dirtying a shirt within 5 seconds, at most, is definitely one of his great talents!) As we lined up for pictures with the judge, she turned to John and joked "Hey, where's your white shirt?? I guess you're not really part of this family, then, right?" The judge thought it was funny. Needless to say, I did NOT!!

Anyway, court, photos, dinner. Adoption Day traditions and all went pretty well. If it wasn't for two particularly HORRID little girls today (actually, both are teens – but surely acting little!), it would
have been a dream. :-)