Ring in the New Year

2013 ended with a super fun family party. We gathered with a bunch of friends at the church building and ate food, played games, kids watched movies and played xbox etc. We made it much longer than I thought we would, but headed home around 11pm when cheeks were red from bouncing so much and toddlers were melting down.

We still toasted with the boys when we got home and then sent them all to bed with a see ya next year.

Happy New Year!

Adoption Celebration

We were so, so excited about adopting Layla and Perry, since they have been with us almost a year and a half and we love them and we love adoption, so E and I decided to throw a big party to celebrate. We arranged for our celebration to be held in the afternoon at a local trampoline/play area. We all played for 2 and a half hours and ate cake. One of our friends children (4 year olds are awesome) suggested we sing "Happy Adoption" (to the tune of happy birthday) to Layla and Perry, so we did that, too. :)

I cracked up at these next two pictures of Jared and Eric . . . looks like he was caught right at the punch line and it must have been a good one. :)

We are so grateful for great friends who support our family!

Family of Six

Presenting . . .

Layla Belle Allred

and

Perry Damian Allred

They are mine so I can use their names on my blog now!

It was such a beautiful experience taking our family to the courthouse to make it legal. But I can't wait to head to the temple in just a few weeks!

We were supposed to arrive at the courthouse by 10:30am for our 10:45am adoption. We were doing so good and arrived just after 10am at the courthouse we have had every other court hearing at. We took our time unloading and getting into the courthouse. Once we got through security I figured I'd better check which room we'd be in. The receptionists were so confused and searched and couldn't find anything about our scheduled adoption. One lady finally took me back to a clerk and she looked us up and informed us that the adoption was to be held at the Superior court, not this one. What?? All of my nightmares came true! She wrote down the address for us and we rushed out of there as fast as we could. It was now 10:30 (remember that's the time we were supposed to be there). And of course every light was red and every pedestrian was walking through the crosswalk. We arrived at 10:45, found a parking spot right across the street, and hurried up to the courthouse as quickly as our crew could go. Luckily, they were running a little behind and we made it just as the adoption scheduled before us got out. They cleared out of the room and we had a 30 sec chat with our attorney and we went in.

We thought we had an idea of what to expect since we've done this before with Kyler and Kacin, but everything was done so differently from how we did it in Utah.

They swore us in.

Our attorney asked us a few questions, including what snack Layla was eating and what Perry was upset about (trying to take off my necklace).

 The judge asked us a few simple questions and pronounced us a family.

They invited us all up to stand by the judge and try out her gavel. Perry swung it around a little and tapped it. Kacin wound up his arm and gave a huge whack. I didn't even know what to think about that (well, I knew I wasn't so happy he did it, but I wasn't expecting anything like that so I didn't know how to react). Kyler must have thought Kacin had a pretty good idea and before we could stop him he brought that gavel down so hard a piece of it chipped off and flew across her desk. Seriously yikes. Layla was much more gentle about it then her brothers.

We are officialy a family of six!!!

Our adoption was followed by the adoption of Layla and Perry's bio sister into a wonderful family.