A Personal Bleg

As you know, we've been in limbo for what feels like years regarding the termination of the Fries' biological parents' rights and thus the ability for the adoption of the Fries to proceed.

It's been nearly two weeks now since we heard from our lawyer that the Superior Court upheld the trial court's ruling to sever the bios' rights.

We received information last week on the background checks we need to have done to prove that we are stalwart, worthy folks who should be entrusted with these children (three of 'em, folks), and started to do that, and my black printer cartridge promptly went out of ink. Feh. I ordered ink through Amazon, and then turned my attention to the more pressing issue:

The $1000 retainer that our lawyer said she needed.

Gleeps.

We hadn't been expecting that, although I suppose we should have.

So, in the process of filling out forms and remembering every address I've ever lived at for my whole freaking life, along with every person I've ever shared a dwelling with, and the same for Hubby, we also had to figure out how to come up with the $1200 for the retainer and the fees for running three different background checks.

We do not have the money. We have growing kids, a growing grocery budget, and Christmas next month. We have a shoestring budget, and back child support that's still owed (but not being paid) from during the appeal process. And our usual benefactors have said they unfortunately cannot help with this one.

They're our kids.

We will find a way to do this.

To that end, we have our own GoFundMe campaign now running. GoFundMe offers secure online donations. (I've also put up a link in the sidebar.)

I'm hopeful we can raise the money by the end of the week.

We need about 24 people who can kick in $50 each, or 60 people who can kick in $20 each. Every little bit helps.

We all want to have Hubby's last name by Christmas. Can you help us make that happen?

Reflections

My dad asked me earlier this week if I could scrounge some pictures of the kids or our family around Christmas time. The big choir he sings with (I forget what nom de blog I've used for it in the past) is gearing up for their Christmas concerts, which are always a big deal, and they're putting together a slideshow presentation of choir members' Christmas pics. I'm always taking pictures, and I knew that I also had a number of wintry-scene photos for filler, if he needed them.

I finally found the time to hunt through my (rather extensive) archives this afternoon.

It was a walk down memory lane.

Christmas Eve, 2008.

 Goodness. I can hardly believe how little they were!

We helped decorate! (2009)

We got a new artificial tree this year, and they were very proud that they got to help. They helped the year before, but this tree was bigger, so it was even cooler to hang ornaments on.

Christmas morning, 2009, at Gramma & Boppa's.

Daddy reads out of the Advent book Gramma bought. (2010)

Post-decorating, 2010

This was our 2010 Christmas card picture.

 Hubby's brilliance in those last two pictures.

Christmas morning, 2010

Taking pictures on the stairs before going down and seeing the the tree on Christmas morning is a tradition I grew up with. Up until this year, I wasn't sure that we'd have Christmases forever with these little goobers. But with the August court decision, we knew we would...and so I insisted on starting this tradition with the Fries.

Post-decorating, 2011, in our new house.

Christmas morning, 2011.

 Yeah, they're about as thrilled about the tradition as I was at that age.

Medium in front of the lit (but not yet decorated) tree, 2012.

Large in front of the tree, 2012.

Small in front of the tree, 2012.

 Yeah, if you were wondering, those last three were Hubby's idea, too.

Fries wrapped in lights! (2012)

2012

Our "nice" family picture, 2012.

Let's get silly! (2012)

 Those were my idea. Yeah. Turned out really well. But when did the Fries get so big?

Medium Fry, 2013.

Large Fry, 2013.

Small Fry, 2013.

Twinsies! (2013)

Fries, 2013.

Christmas morning, 2013.

 My goodness. Just yesterday, they were how they looked in that first picture.

I look forward to this year's picture on the stairs. They've grown so much. Even since this picture back in May...

Family Day celebration, 2014.

But this year will be different, I hope.

The pictures will feature the same subjects, of course. That hasn't changed.

The stairs will be the same, too.

The jammies will be new. But then, they always are.

What's different this year?

This year, if the scheduling works out the way we want it to, we'll all have Hubby's last name by Christmas.

Yes, the Superior Court rendered their decision this week. They unanimously upheld the trial court's decision, determining that there was no judicial error or abuse of discretion and that there was sufficient evidence to grant our involuntary termination petition pursuant to adoption.

We still have to wait 30 days for the appeal timeframe, but it's unlikely that Bro will appeal to the state Supreme Court. (The county will no longer pay for his attorney, who has indicated that she will not appeal further anyway.) And, realistically, we would not be able to schedule the adoption hearing earlier than 30 days out as it is. We've asked our attorney to see if we can schedule the hearing before Christmas, for we'd all love to be Hubby's-Last-Name-ers by then.

It would truly be the best Christmas present we could all ask for.

**If you're wondering how many days it was, total, we got the court decision on Day 187, if you count from the date the appeal was file. It's 220 days from the day that the judge rendered her decision on our petition.

Dinner Conversations

Medium: Daddy, have you heard the saying, "the more, the merrier"? I think it means that it's more fun when there's lots of people there.

Hubby: That's right.

Medium: Is it always true?

Hubby: No, not always. Sometimes it's good to have lots of people around. Other times, like when I'm in the tub, I want to be alone, without any other people. I don't like people watching me while I'm in the tub.

Small: I don't like to take baths in front of boys. Only you, Daddy.

At the Table

Hubby: I said I was normal and boring. You said I wasn't. So what does that make you?

Medium Fry: Talented!

Word's Worth

Yesterday evening, after dinner, this happened...

Medium Fry: Mom, what does "frolicking" mean?

Me: Playing.

Medium: I just made that word up.

Me: You did not!

Medium: Yes, I did. I've never heard it before. I just made it up.

Me: That word was in existence long before you were born.

Medium (anticlimactically): Oh.

I realized too late that the perfect response would have been to ask her how I knew the definition of a word she'd "just made up."

She certainly keeps me on my toes...

Good gravy.

We're at the urgent care today, because Medium has the same illness that I have, Hubby has, my parents have, and one of my aunts has (the bunch of us were all together last weekend).

The PA listened as I explained Medium's symptoms, and then listened to Medium's lungs.

Then she peered into Medium's right ear.

"There's something pink in there!" she exclaimed. "It looks like an eraser!"

I looked. Sure did.

Medium said, "Well, I had an eraser on my finger once, and thought I got it off, and then I itched my ear."

The nurse came in to flush it out, and Medium said she'd had it in there since September!

So we not only got her medicine, we got her ear flushed out too.

I will say that eraser fragment looked a lot bigger in her ear canal than it did when it came out in the basin.

Never a dull moment around here.

176 Days

As of today, that's how many days our appeal has dragged on.

Before you get your Hanes in a half-hitch over how long that's been, I should point something out. A lot of appeals that aren't on the children's fast track haven't even made it to review by the Superior Court by this time. Normal appeals can take nearly a year to be reviewed, and then another 200ish days to the Superior court to file a decision.

That sort of makes the 102 days between the filing and the review by the Court darned fast.

Hubby did some checking, and found records of similar termination hearing appeals. Of the seven he looked at, the average time (and I use the term "average" rather loosely), he said that it took anywhere from 100-250 days between the appeal filing and the date of the filing of the Superior Court's decision.

Incidentally, all but one of those appeals upheld the trial court's ruling. (There were exigent circumstances in that one case that simply aren't present in ours.)

So it looks like we're in the home stretch, as far as the waiting is concerned. I still hold my breath every day as I check the mail, waiting for an envelope from our lawyer's office.

We expect that the Superior Court will side with our trial judge. We'll have another 30 days beyond the date of the Court's decision to wait before we can have the adoption hearing. We're hopeful this can be resolved before the end of the year.

But I don't mind telling you...the waiting is hard. The girls especially are having a tough time because they don't understand why this can't happen yet. "We can't yet" is a difficult concept for them.

Heck, it's difficult for me. I want to scream at the court clerks that our lives are hanging in the balance; what's taking them so long to type up the decision?

Waiting is rarely any fun.