Toddler Travels

We are finally going on our first family vacation! We've been out of town for 3-4 day trips but typically we had other reasons for going like lot's of weddings. This will be our first 1 week, summer fun family vacation and we are stoked! The only goal is to have fun as a family! Jon and I are very giddy and are getting the kids super excited. My parents will also be joining us for a couple of days and hopefully my bestie Megan will be as well. In 3 days we will be headed to San Diego to show the kids the beach, take them to the San Diego Zoo, Seaworld and anything else fun we come across. 

As excited as we are, I am extremely nervous about a 6 hour car ride with two 2 1/2 year olds. I have spent hours and I mean hours scanning mommy blog after mommy blog for ideas. One thing I knew for sure was I would continue my mom's tradition of giving gifts every hour or so in the car, if you remember she did this for the kids last September when we went up North. The hard part is finding activities that young kids can do in the car that will also entertain them for more than 3 minutes. Here are the activities and/or toys I have wrapped and ready to go:

1. Color matching with pom poms: All the pom pom's have magnets on them so they hopefully won't be rolling everywhere!
   
2. Popsicle stick puzzles: These also have magnets on them!
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Fishing Game: I can't find the awesome blog that gave me this idea but I'm curious if it'll work. I made fishing poles with yarn, dowel rod's, and magnets. Then I printed images of fish, whales, starfish, sea turtles, etc, cut them out and added magnets to them. I plan to throw these all over the floor of the car and then the kids can "cast" their fishing pole to the bottom of the car and see what they catch! 
4. Window clings: I'm nervous their little arms won't be able to reach the window's so we'll see if this one works.
5. Lap tables from Amazon: Of course I got one in pink and one in blue. I will let you know if they live up to their 5 star reviews! 
   
6. ID Bracelets from Amazon: I was reading a Yahoo news article about a woman that lost her child at Disneyland and at the end she suggested an ID bracelet or a kid's GPS tracker. Since my kids are not old enough to know that my real name is not Mommy or remember a phone number I thought this was a great idea. I choose these bracelets because they cannot be undone with 1 hand so the child cannot take it off. My kids love bracelets so they are going to think it's a neat gift and I can be contacted if we get separated - win win! Another cheaper idea is to write your name and phone number on the tag inside the child's shirt. I decided against that since it's not as easily seen.
   
7. Snacks: Lot's and lot's of snacks but I wrapped up some of the cheeze-its, oreo's, chips ahoy, and teddy graham's that are found at registers for $1.
   
8. Fart noise cups: Kid's love making funny noises especially fart noises - we will either love or hate this one by the end of the trip!
9. Play dough
10. Shape matching: All the shapes have magnets on them!
11. Map to track our progress: I loved this idea. It's hard for little kids to grasp the concept of a 6 hour drive so this gives them a visual. While I was writing this update I thought of a cool idea to add. I'm going to make magnets with their faces on them so I can move it along to show how far we are! I forgot to take a picture of this one.
12. Quiet Books: You remember the creative book I made, right? I'm bringing that one and one my mom made. They've been hidden for awhile so hopefully they seem like new to the kids!
13. Pipe cleaners: Kid's love random things, pipe cleaners are one of those. They can bend them into all sorts for shapes!
14. Crayons
15. Plastic Animals
16. Sticker books

I am hoping that is enough activities along with some sing along time, looking out the windows, if we are lucky - nap time, playing at a park in Yuma, potty breaks, and stocking up at Chile Pepper. 

Wish us luck - 3 days and counting :)

ADOPTION DAY!

The day I had been waiting 818 days for had finally come. December 3rd - Adoption Day. I woke up in the morning and got the kids situated with their breakfast next to the Christmas Tree. Jaxson (that feels nice!) has been infatuated with the Christmas Tree since we set it up and every morning he runs to turn the lights on. He couldn't eat breakfast the first couple days because he would just stand and watch the tree lights so we told him Thursday was a special day and he could eat in the living room and watch the tree. In fact the whole family sat at the little, itty bitty kids table and ate cereal. It was a perfect start to the day.

After breakfast the texts and the status updates started coming - there were so many I couldn't keep up! A couple made me tear up and I was sure it wasn't the last of the day.

After breakfast we dressed the kids and took them to take photos with Aunt Amy and Uncle Swaz. They went pretty well. Jaxson wasn't feeling well so he gave up on smiling pretty quickly and just wanted to be cuddled. I enjoyed every minute of it - normally he's so active and I only get cuddles in the morning when he's not fully awake yet.

Roaring like a Lion!

Snuggles

Tickles

I forgot to mention, I was very frustrated earlier in the week because Jayce got sent home from school on Tuesday for being sick and then Jaxson got sent home on Wednesday. On top of that I was battling a pretty nasty sinus infection. On Wednesday we actually had Jaxson at the urgent care for an infection. I was less than thrilled that my family was going to be sick on adoption day (Thursday) but at the same time felt like I couldn't complain - we were going to be recognized as a family!

After pictures we went home and just played with the kids until it was time to leave for court. My husband's awesome sister tagged our car so we got some honks on the way to court :)

We waited about 20 minutes before we were called in at which point I realized we didn't have Judge Cohen as requested. Judge Cohen made the decision to keep the kids with their family so we requested he complete the adoption. Unfortunately he was out on an unplanned medical leave. Oh well.....adoption day goes on except then the step in judge asks if we want to reschedule our adoption day because our lawyer was at the wrong courthouse and had all the paperwork. I almost broke down right then and there. Did she not understand how long we waited for this day? Did she not understand that 19 people had requested the day off work, been pulled out of school, or missed their nap time so they could witness our forever family moment? I was dumbfounded that she would even suggest such a thing! Luckily Jon jumped in and asked if we could wait for our lawyer to drive across town and just delay a little. The judge happily agreed stating the next case would take about 20 minutes.

TWO HOURS, numerous snacks, 50 runs through the courthouse halls, and 20 meltdowns later we were called back in. I had lost all faith that our forever day would ever occur and at that point just wanted it over because I felt awful making everyone wait at a courthouse that long. Ten minutes later we were declared Jonathan, Tina, Jaycee, and Jaxson Lyons! Worth the wait? You bet!

Afterwards we all came back to our house for a toast, dinner, celebration, laughter, and love. We are finally the family we always thought, we are the Lyons!

Judge Rules: The foster parents are their "family"

I've been waiting for months to be able to write this update and now that it's here, I'm at a loss of words.

On August 13th, at 8:15 am I got a call from my husband. Not out of the normal so I didn't think anything of it. He asked me if I'd read my e-mail and I hadn't so I quickly opened it. I saw an e-mail from our lawyer that was the judge's ruling. I quickly flipped to the last page where the final ruling is made and read the following as tears flooded my eyes.

If I wasn't at work I would have squealed but instead I just kept saying how excited I was and we could finally move on and what a great judge we had through my tears of happiness. I was so excited and wanted to shout and scream to the world all the happiness that was in my heart. We are really going to get to stay a family! After I hung up with Jon, I just started mass texting family and friends. Honestly I have no idea how many text messages I sent and how many phone calls I received, my phone was buzzing all morning. I ran around the office telling coworkers. I was useless at work while I responded to text messages and answered phone calls - which just left me in tears of happiness over and over again and I received texts full of emotions of excitement from our family and friends.

I was so excited that I have to share this story of just how high on happiness I was. One of my employees went to the urgent care about an hour after I found out the news. Five minutes after talking to my employee, another coworker asks me if everything is all right. I respond very brightly "Yes, everything is fantastic!". She asks me about my employee stating she overheard that she wasn't feeling good. Oops - in 5 minutes I had already forgotten about my employee and was back in my own head celebrating our family. My coworker hadn't heard the news yet so once I explained to her, she understood. 

The judge took 6 days to rule. He was allowed 60 and he took 6. We'd heard over and over what a great judge he is but that proves it for me. He knew how important it was to make this decision and allow the kids to gain permanency and move on with their lives. After months of delays - he finally made the difficult decision. By difficult, I mean it's difficult in the eyes of the court system. He was presented with two equally fit families that want to adopt these beautiful children. This situation doesn't present itself often in the DES system. Sad I know but all too true, in fact they more often see kid's that have no permanency option and my kids had 2! To the judge, that's amazing and awful. Amazing because these kids will be loved either way but awful because who would want to make that decision?

His ruling severed birth mom's rights in the first sentence of the minutes. The next 3 pages discuss placement of the children and it was very well written.

He continues...

Although I already knew we were their family, it was nice of the state of Arizona to catch up.

Every other blog I read about foster care talks about the loss that occurs when permanency is decided. Every other blog talks about how the foster mom feels for the birth mom because of her loss once severance occurs. I didn't have any of those emotions when I heard the news. Maybe I'm heartless. Maybe I'm an awful person. Maybe I'm selfish. Maybe I had already given all my compassion to her and this was my family's moment. I think I'll go with the latter. In my mind, this allows me to move forward with my family, now the unknown won't threaten us and give us frustration and anger. Now when my kid's ask about their birth mom, I can talk in a positive light because I know my kids are safe.

The day after the news I spent my time writing lists of all the things Jon and I had said at one time or another "that's something we'll need to decide on once we adopt". Well now's the time!

• First Names
• Middle Names
• College savings accounts
• Make a will
• Adoption party planning! (Clear your calendar when we have a date - this is going to be a big party!)
• Adoption photo shoot
• Life Insurance changes
• Jon's full family photos
• Tina's full family photos

What else am I missing? I know there's more but most of it I can't start on until everything is finalized. 

You might be thinking, what are the next steps? Well we happened to ask our lawyer that exact question.

1. Wait 15 days for the appeal time. If an appeal is file, this will delay things at least a month.
2. After the appeal time is over or the appeal is lost, the kids will be free for adoption
3. File adoption paperwork
4. Adoption hearing in 2-3 months

The most important sentence of the lawyers e-mail "It should be done before 2016!"

That would make our year!