OFFICIALLY OURS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey everyone, court date was yesterday and Asha is finally, after a long wait and many court issues and changes, a Parisien! PRAISE GOD! Thank you for all of the prayers and thoughts, it was all very much appreciated!

(THERE ARE 2 MORE POSTS TODAY BELOW THIS ONE, SOME VIDEOS AND SOME PICTURES!)

This is how our very important day went:

Today we consider to be called “Gotchya Day” which is the day that most adoptive families celebrate as the day when their child is legally named as theirs. We have been waiting for this day to come since we first heard about Asha. After this day, no one from the birth family can request to have Asha back because the judge in the high court stamps his approval that we can in fact adopt her. We always trusted that God would take us to this moment and that He wouldn’t send us half way around the world to be with our daughter only for us to get bad news. We know God orchestrated this adoption right from the beginning and we also know that this is His plan for our lives. But even so, this day is still a huge obstacle that we have been waiting to overcome.

We ended up going outside this morning and spent some time taking pictures of me with Asha and Scott with Asha, and Asha even kept in her hair bow. We wanted to have pictures to document this most important day of our lives as a family of three.

Scott went for his usual walk with Asha after pictures and me and Lynda sat visiting on the front porch which is customary for us to do during walk time. We were discussing what time we thought court might be scheduled for and Lynda said, “Let me see if I can find out”, so she called our lawyers office because she knew the secretary. Lynda was surprised to find out from the secretary that court had already finished and that Ms. Cato was back in her office, so she handed me the phone and transferred me through to Ms. Cato. Ms. Cato said, “I went to court already and am happy to say that it was approved and final.” This happened at 10:40 am and I did everything I could to not scream! I cannot explain how I felt at that exact second; it was as if a huge weight was lifted off of my shoulders because I now knew that Asha was officially ours. Of course I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t cry, so I sat quietly on the porch crying tears of joy. I had to wait for Scott to get back from the walk to tell him the wonderful news which felt like an eternity. I remember watching him at the top of the hill and I thought, I can’t believe we are finally a family after everything we’ve had to get through to get to this point. Once Scott got nearer to the bottom of the hill and saw my tears, he immediately thought something bad had happened. When he found out the verdict he hugged me and Asha and said, “Asha, you are now Asha Parisien and you are stuck with us for good.” It was an amazing moment; a moment in our family that we will not soon forget.