Friday, February 1, 2008
Our Big Announcement
After weeks of keeping you guessing about our important news,I am finally able to share it with you. No,I am not pregnant,even though I would love to be because I am one of those crazy women that loves being pregnant. However,we do have a new member in our family.
My husband has a daughter named Skylar and she will be turning 9 in a few weeks. She has lived in Georgia with her mother since she was a baby. It was brought to our attention by the Family Court in Georgia that she was removed from her mother's care back in November. We were supposed to appear in court in November but we didn't receive the court papers until the day before court. Pat called the next morning and explained the situation and the hearing was postponed until January 28. That was the soonest date that they could give us and it was upsetting because Skylar was going to have to stay in foster care until then.
It was very hard for Pat to have to wait that long. He didn't like the fact that she was going to have to sit in foster care for two months. I know that he had all sorts of bad thoughts running through his mind about how she was being taken care of. But it was out of our hands at that point.
We left this past Saturday nite after Pat got out of work. We had Hadlei in tow. Thankfully we were able to get the kids' grandparents to keep them while we were gone so that they could go to school. We left around 8:30pm and drove straight through to Georgia,arriving there around 11am. Hadlei slept all nite. We found a place to stay and settled in. We had some time to kill so we decided to check out Cartersville. BORING!!! They have nothing there! We ended up going to Walmart and Target. Like we had to drive to Georgia to do that! And I have never seen so many pawn shops,nail shops and salons in such a small area. Get a mall people!
Court was at 10am and we were more than ready. I had gotten all of our paperwork and pictures together. We also added some letters from family and friends. I wanted to have more than we needed instead of just enough. I waited outside the court room with Hadlei while Pat went in. When he came out he told me that the judge loved him and wanted to rule on his behalf and let Skylar leave with us that day but she couldn't because DFACS was involved in trying to reunify the family. Our only other option was to file for custody in Superior Court. Our lawyer gave us the name of a lawyer that could help us and we had to meet her back at the court house at 4pm. We had about 4 hours until our meeting so we went to find something to do. Needless to say it was the longest 4 hours of our lives.
We met with the new lawyer at 4pm. She explained what we could do and it was pretty straight forward. We could file for custody and either have Tabitha (Skylar's mom) sign off and not go to court or she could refuse and we would have to come back in a few weeks for court. Long story short - Tabitha agreed to sign off and give Pat custody. We met back at the court house the next day and the papers were signed and filed. We were now officially able to take Skylar home with us.
We started our trek home about 4:30pm on Tuesday. We planned on driving straight through again. It wasn't as easy of a trip as it was on the way down. It rained quite a bit in Tennessee and we hit a traffic jam in Knoxville. Driving through Virginia was a trip. It rained 4 out of the 5 hours hours of the drive. I think Pennsylvania was the worst. We hit fog and it was so bad that they closed down a few exits of Interstate 81. We had to take some back roads which were just as foggy. Thank God we had a GPS or we'd probably still be sitting there. On our way into New York it started to sleet and snow. We were starting to think that someone didn't want us to get home. We didn't pull into our driveway until 9am. Neither of us want to leave NY again!
After all is said and done it was well worth the trip. Skylar is elated to be living with us. I know that she has missed us just as much as we missed her. She has a huge extended family that will be there to support her. This wouldn't have been possible without the help of our friends and family. So thank you to Grandma and Grandpa Wood for keeping the kids so that they could go to school. Thank you to Sal for loaning us his GPS. It was a lifesaver! And thank you to Pat's mom for letting us use her car to make the trip. We definitely wouldn't have made it there without it.
Welcome home Skylar! We love you are a thrilled to have you here with us.
P.S. For some reason I can't load my pics. When I figure it out I will post some!Labels: family
