Happiest day of our lives!!!!!

Today was the day....Finally....the culmination of almost a years worth of emotions joy and stress. Today we went to court with all of our friends and family in tote and the judge finalized the adoption!!!! I am exhausted. Long weekend of preparing, highly emotional day, much needed nap time with G-Man!!!!!!! He is still sleeping so I just went through this entire blog preparing it for the public ;) This is such an amazing story, you can see if you read it from start to finish how God's hand has been in every part of it, weaving events and hearts and lives together, like he so often does. I am in awe of his goodness!!!! Gavin Lane Terry is officially our son!

I want to thank Deb, Tim, and Cara for making this day possible and Amy for being our liaison and planting the seed in our hearts. If you are reading this and have not started at the beginning you are missing out on a story that shows that hand of God in action.

I LOVE YOU GAVIN!!!!!!

updates

So just to update from my last post, Christmas went great. He got to see his grandma and Papa and had a great time there, then he got to meet his new family too. All of my family was there to meet him and so was Trint's. He had a blast with all the kids and they welcomed him with open arms, all very excited to finally meet him and he was just part of the family :) He doesn't really play with any of the stuff he got, even the train set that I was absolutely sure he would never stop playing with, he has played with all of an hour. I guess that how it goes though. Next we had his birthday 1-2. We had a couple parties for him at Christmas and then 2 at home once we got back. We did a small party at the house with the neighbors on his actual birthday and he really enjoyed that, We had Spongebob cupcakes, then we had a swimming party with all of his friends a couple weeks later with a huge Spongebob cake. It was awesome, Kristin Schroeder and I made it and it turned out great! He had a blast swimming!
We have recently had a hang up with the adoption process. Carla, the gal who did out home study, emailed to inform me that DHS has to review it and sign off on it since Trint is a felon. That sparked lots of emails and digging on my part to get all the info that he was requesting. He wanted to know about the charge and what Trint had to do as a result, as far as probation is concerned. Well he got off probation in mid 2009 so tracking down all the documents was a headache. Just when I thought I had gotten all the info he needed, he would write and say that he needed more. It was a difficult process but finally a couple weeks ago I got him everything he needed, he wrote up and sent off his recommendation, and now I think we are waiting on ICPC to do the paperwork and approve it so we can take it before a judge and make it official :) This has been a long process and I will be glad when its over and we can officially call him ours. No more stressing about it! Hopefully it will only be a couple weeks now, but I say that every week. This time I mean it though. I am praying for it to be finalized by mid March, beginning of April at the LATEST!!! I know no one know about this blog but I thank all of you who have been praying for us!

Loooong Time.....again!

Well I have realized that I no longer have any free time. So this is last on the long list of things to do, but I really want to start being more consistent with blogging cause he brings us great joy and we have had some really fun times with him. So as far as fun activities we have done we took him to the Iowa State Fair in August and he LOVED it!!! He wanted to ride every single ride but because he only 3 he could only ride the baby rides which made him pretty mad. He rode em all though. He had a great time and did NOT want to leave. On a side note, anyone who does not believe in kid leashes does not have kids. He was a maniac running around, trying to climb the ATM machines, so we finally had to get a stroller and lock him in it. Not happy about that either ;) Then we took him to Adventureland (may have blogged this one already?) He LOVED that also!!! He learned if he stood on his tip toes he could get on all the big rides so he drug daddy on all of them!!! I am a scaredy cat when it comes to that stuff so dad stepped up and they had a blast!! He even got on the roller coaster....he didn't like that one too much. He was loving all of the rides, even the ones that had Trint sweating ;) We got to go see the real Thomas the Train and go for a train ride and that was a hit, he was really upset and crying when we had to leave. He got his pic with him though. We took him on his first plane ride to Colorado to visit our friends Jer and Jenny and he met some new friends Thomas and Anna. He realized his love for train sets and that ended up being his Christmas present. I hope to get it set up soon, it will be huge! He would literally wake up and go play with the trains and would not stop unless we made him. He loved the plane ride, at the end of the trip I was getting off the plane and saw his bright green shirt in the cock pit, I about died thinking he just ran up in there. Well he did....the pilots were amazing though....they let him sit in the seat and steer and gave him jr wings! We went to Jess's wedding (my co-worker) where he met his Love, Holly, he talked about her non stop for weeks. He would make me pull up her picture on facebook on my phone and would sit and watch Spongebob and stare at her picture. "Holly my girlprend" he would say and "Mommy I love Holly" So CUTE!! At the end of October I had surgery to remove my gallbladder and so Grandma Kathy came up for about a week and then Geri came up after that for about a week. He had a great time playing and bonding with his new grandmas. By the time they had both left it was like trying to detox a heroin addict. I called it grandma crack. He was used to getting everything he wanted, waking up in the morning to brownies and candy and getting even more spoiled. We took him trick or treating and he was Spongebob (of course). We went to the mall, around the neighborhood and Night Eyes at the Zoo. It was great. He was going up to all the people at the attractions and taking pics with them. Then we got to ride the train, which was a big hit. We took him to the apple orchard where he got to ride HUGE slides on potato sacks, jump on a HUGE balloon trampoline, swim in a corn pool, feed goats, and race little tractors and rubber duckies. This summer him and dad would go to Chad's and ride the gator and that was his favorite thing to do. Everyday he would ask to go to Chad's house.
Kristin was babysitting him for a while but Brian got sick so she got a full time job and we were on the daycare hunt again. We found a good place that all the staff are certified teacher so it is like a preschool too. He likes it there and is making new friends. Once in a while he has really bad days that he kicks and hits and breaks stuff, but not too often. As Christmas got closed I was starting to get really worried about the adoption process as Nothing had been done. We paid out attorney in September to start the process and it was almost Christmas as NOTHING had been done yet. I had to write her a firm email stating that we were getting another attorney if she didn't have half of the paperwork done by Christmas. And by half of the paperwork I mean she hadn't even gotten Cara and Brian to sign over parental rights yet....YIKES!! I was so stressed that I started getting Anxiety Hives and am still getting them to this day. Well the email worked cause within days she had an attorney in Lincoln paid and they both signed over rights December 23rd. whew!!! Now all we have to do is finish paperwork, file the petition and after 6 months of being in our home (which is January 22nd) he will be officially ours. Our final meeting with Carla for the home study will be next week and all we need is the Judges signature!!!! YIPPIE!!!!! This is so exciting, he is totally settled in knows we are mom and dad!! He has started to act out in different ways and now when he gets mad he telly me "No my like you mommy" or the dreaded "No my love you Mommy". I can't help but take it personally even though I know I shouldn't, it just breaks my heart so bad when he says things like that. I am starting to struggle with him more, he refuses to listen to me and fights me about everything! He is an angel for his dad and then when I walk in the door its like an instant change. Dad is really having to step up and tell him not to treat me badly or speak to me like that. They have that conversation often. I am hoping to be able to use my FMLA in June or July and be able to stay home with him for 3 months to bond. I really hope that it is a good time for us, that it will be a good bonding time and our relations ship will benefit greatly from it. Lord make it so, please!!! It is my last chance to spend good quality time with him before he starts school for good :(
Well that is enough for now, lots of stuff happening. Hopefully I can do this at least once a week on my lunch break to keep it up to date.