Forever Family Day

Today is a very special day in our house.  It coincides with Remembrance Day, which is quite relevant.  Today is our Forever Family Day.  A year ago today a Judge said that Katie was legally part of our family.  It was such a wonderful and emotional day.  

We started the day at a SeaLife Centre and had great fun looking at all the fish and turtles and had a mission to find Nemo and Dory.  Katie came home with a toy Nemo and a matching necklace and bracelet with Dory on.

We then went to the courts where the ceremony was being held.  It took us ages to find the right way in because we had to go in through the back door of the courts.  It was raining and we were running around trying to work out where to go.  Thankfully we bumped into our Social Workers who showed us the way.  We went up to the Judge's Chambers for the ceremony and then into the court room for photographs.  Katie was initially quite intimidated by the Judges in their wigs and refused to share a lift with one Judge.  Our Judge took her wig off and let us all have a try!  One of the Judge's ushers was so emotional and happy for us, he set me off crying.  Our Social Workers both came along for the ceremony.  I could barely keep the tears away.  Katie was so grown up and loved being the centre of all the attention.  It was so wonderful.  Katie was given a scroll of her new birth certificate and a Teddy for the local football team (sadly not one we support!!). 

After the ceremony we went to a nearby retail centre and had a lovely lunch at a restaurant called Giraffe.  Katie loved every single moment of her day.  I don't think she really understood it all though.  We have since spoken about our special day with the Judge and she says she remembers it. She does have a phenomenal memory and has memories from when she was about one years old, so I can believe it.

We were planning to go out for a meal to celebrate at teatime today but we have now decided to postpone our plans until tomorrow.  Katie had an extremely emotional day visiting Grandma yesterday and was emotional and overtired when we got home.  It took me such a long time to soothe her enough to sleep and she was worried that I was going to leave her.  She then woke up from a bad dream about 3am and again at 4am and ended up snuggling in bed with us until it was time to get up.  She will be far too tired to go out today and will need to go to bed early, bless her.  We have decided that we will go out tomorrow instead. 

We have some friends of a friend visiting us tomorrow morning to talk about their adoption plans so it will be a special adoption-based day tomorrow and I think it will be nice to go out for lunch afterwards. I was thinking that maybe we head back down to the restaurant where we had lunch last year.  It's a bit of a drive but it might be a nice thing to do, however when I talked to Katie about it she said she wanted to go to the restaurant where you could have all the crunchy bits!  Funnily enough this is the Harvester restaurant we went on the day our case went to court to adopt Katie.  The adoptive parents don't attend that hearing because the birth parents can chose to attend.  The day we celebrate as our family day came a month later and is the official celebration day.  So the Harvester it is!!

Happy Anniversary to our family!