April 28th marked a very big day for our family, Vans gotcha day!!! For those of you who are new to the adoption lingo a gotcha day is what some folks like to call the day that their childs adoption is finalized. Van's was on Friday the 28th and it was everything we'd hoped for and then some!! The ceremony is very brief, it's held in general court in front of the judge who reviews all the documents that have been submitted for accuracy. Once this is done the judge says a bunch of words that didn't make sense to me, and then she announces Van to the courtroom as Van Jameson Gannon!
All told it took about 15 minutes to get to the point of cheers and applause, and I have to be honest, at times throughout this journey we both doubted whether or not we'd ever get to those precious 15 minutes! After the ceremony we came back to our house for a small brunch with a special cake Grandma Donna and I made for the occasion, celebrating the official arrival of Van! We knew that today was a special day already, but when we got home from the ceremony and the new Prana catalog nearly matched the cake perfectly it just got better.
When it was all over and everyone had gone back home we sat down for a minute and took a moment ot catch our breath! Van's gotcha day had felt like our wedding day, one big blur and it's over in a flash! Now that we're officially a family we are settling in to the fact that from here on out we just have to be Van's parents. I know that probably sounds silly to some people, but when the only parenting we knew prior to this was parenting under the watchful eye of the state of Washington, being able to "just parent" Van like a normal parent would is a pretty big deal! It's still a little hard to believe sometimes that we don't have to get anyone's authorization to take family vacations, or if he gets a fever we don't have to document how many doses of tylenol he's had.
So as we embark on this journey of parenthood be prepared for some shameless gloating on this blog about Van's achievements:) And of course plenty of pictures to go along with the gloating!:)
