What comes next?

I thought I would catch everyone up on what comes next in our adoption process. A lot of people have asked us what needs to happen before we bring Marisol and Omar home. So here are the final steps to bringing our kiddos home!

Omar has his first court day date set for Monday April 7th at 9:00am. We are not required to attend. The first court is to show that the birth mother search has been done and that all rights are signed over t0 the state/DIF office. Omar was abandoned in Mexicali and no birth mother was ever found. So his process went much quicker than Marisol's process. Marisol had 6 names pop up. This meant that her birth mother had a common name and our Lawyer had to go search out all 6 people. 3 were in Tijuana, 2 in Ensenada and 1 in Sonora. This delayed Marisol's process by 6 weeks. But that is now done and we are waiting for her first court date. At the first of three courts, we are legally assigned Omar and Marisol's parents! We then start applying for their VISAS, new birth certificates (which have our names on them as their parents and they take on our last name) and Passports. When we receive their birth certificates, they will be American Citizens. How cool is that?

The second court happens a couple of months later. At that court appearance we are required to attend. We have to bring a character witness with us that is not family. We were concerned on who to ask as they will have to take time off work and away from their family to travel to Mexico with us for a couple of days. We have such wonderful friends who said they would do it. Thank you all for volunteering! We have some good friends who live close to San Diego who are willing to be our witnesses. This works out great because they only live about 60-90 minutes from the border of Mexico. Thanks Brian and Natalie for being willing to come on a wild trip to Mexico.

The third court appearance is the finalization (for Mexico) of our adoption. Yeah! It is usually scheduled for a month or two after the second court date. For this we drive to Mexico, pick up the kids drive to Tijuana where we board a plane and fly to Cuidad Juarez. Juarez is the only place in Mexico where your adoption is finalized. We go to the Mexican consulate, present our paper work, VISAS, passports and the kids receive one last physical from an American Doctor to get their Clean Bill of Health to enter the United States. From there we fly back to Tijuana and drive home.

We were told to cross the border at midnight so it will be less busy because we have to cross at a different place and have the US check all paper work and stamp Marisol and Omar's passports. Then we start the long drive home. We talked about stopping in San Diego to take the kids to the Zoo and stopping in Vegas for a day or two where my sister Maren and her husband Jeff live. We are frequent visitors of Maren and Jeff's because Vegas is exactly half way from Mexico to Logan. Plus we want Marisol and Omar to meet their Tia Maren and Tio Jeff since they do live so far away.

Once we get home, we have one final thing to do before the kids are sealed to us and we become an eternal family. After 6 months of the kids being home, our case worker Larry needs to come and do a home visit to see how the kids are adjusting and to see if there are any concerns with the home environment. Once his report is finished and sent to who knows where, we are FINAL!

Seems so far away but so close at the same time! We are so excited to be in the final stages of our adoption process of our beautiful children! Thank you all for your love, support, prayers and encouragement. We are truly blessed to have such loving family members and friends by our side through this roller coaster of a life experience! We love you all!!