Little Man is...

….Legally Free!! The contested termination trial began on January 28, and finally today, at around 5 pm, the judge handed down her decision that he is legally free and that parental rights will be terminated. It has been a long time coming, and we are so thankful for the outcome! We especially want to thank all of you for your support and prayers during this last year and half. It has been a long haul, but we really feel blessed that God has worked through it all.

Little Man's new name will be Austin Charles – and we are going to slowly start integrating his new name into our daily lives. We think it will be pretty easy – we’ve hinted around for a few months now with him about the name.

The next step, just like with Daniel & Gretchen, is to be assigned an adoption case worker. Then we have a few months of waiting for all the paperwork to go through. Hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait! Hopefully, we’ll be assigned the same case worker for all three kids, and be able to adopt all three on the same day. That’s the next thing you can pray with us about. They tell us it will take about 6 months to do all the adoption paperwork and bureaucratic red tape, so perhaps late summer, early fall it can all be finalized. We will be planning a rather large celebration party at that time, and we are hoping the weather will still be good so we can have it at a local park.

Thank you again for all your love and prayers and support for our family. We feel very blessed to be able to adopt these kids – they have definitely made our lives richer!