IT'S A BOY.....AND A GIRL!!!!!!!!

Well, our adoption of Autumn and Treyton finally happened today!!!!! It has been a long awaited day! It's hard to believe that I met the kids four years ago this next month. When I first met them, they came to my home on weekends from out of town in order to visit their biological family. What started out as an every other weekend thing, then turned in to a weekly weekend thing, then turned in to moving in with me for what we thought would be 5-6 months. Autumn came first in December 2004. Two weeks later in January 2005, Treyton came along. Needless to say days turned in to weeks, weeks turned in to months and months turned in to years. And here we are today adopting them! I need to post a pic of them when they first came. Treyton looks so tiny! Maybe that's cuz he was....what 14 year old boy wears a size 10-12 boys!!! TINY!! As you can tell....he's grown a bit! :) It has been an amazing journey to watch them grow up. We are so blessed to have them!



So here's the pics of our day.......



This is us waiting in the lobby for our turn with the judge......

We didn't have to wait alone as we brought our posse along! Front left is my mom. She came up from Norton for the big festivities. My dad was unable to make it as he was out all last week from work so couldn't miss today. Next to my mom is my mother-in-law Nancy. You can't see her very well and then she is hiding her husband Bob behind her! Then of course is Treyton, myself, Zachy, Donnie and Autumn. Next to Autumn is our foster care worker Cindy. Without Cindy our adoption would probably not happened today! Or maybe ever! She worked a ton along with another gal, Christy, to make sure we got Trey's adoption done before his 18th birthday! We made it with a whole 3 days to spare! Next to Cindy is Donnie's and I's neice Sylvia. Front and center is our nephew Zeke. Sylvia and Zeke belong to Donnie's sister Dori. And behind the camera is my good friend Sheri. She and two of her kids, Addie and Aiden joined us as well!

This is us in the courtroom with our attorney Doug. He as well had to rush our paperwork through in order to make our adoption happen before Trey's birthday. He absolutely HATES to have his photo taken, but Sheri was our photographer for the day and she was NOT taking no for an anwer! Look closely in the background and you can see my father-in-law!

This is us with Judge Flaigle as he is signing our adoption paperwork. He was very personable and spent quite a bit of time talking with us. He has been the judge on the kids' case since they entered foster care 4 1/2 years ago. Next to Judge Flaigle is Jackie the kids' court service officer. She's also been on the kids' case since the beginning!

Close-up of the signing as it is oh so important!

Here is a final pic of us with the Judge AFTER the adoption was finalized! So meet my new official kids. They've always been my kids, just now it's official! We have Autumn Marie-Kay Thacker. She decided to keep her last name, which is fine. We did add to her middle name. Kay is my grandfather's middle name, my mom's middle name and my middle name. So given she is my first and only daughter we thought we would give that to her too! We also have Treyton Michael-Robert Jones. We added Robert to Trey's middle name and of course changed his last name. Robert is Donnie's dad's name as well as Donnie's middle name. I won't include their height and weight as you would on a typical birth announcement! I don't know that they would appreciate that! Although Treyton would like it known he is oh so close to being taller than Donnie. It is a goal he has in life! :)

I personally love our new family photo! Hopefully in the next 60 days, we will be able to announce that Zach is also "officially" ours! He embarrassed me a bit today. While Sheri was taking the above photo of us with the judge in front of the bench, Jackie was also taking a court photo. Well, she snapped her pic a bit earlier and Zach had taken his hand, well really his arm and shoved in down the front of my shirt! My arm that isn't holding him was around Treyton's waist, thus I couldn't do anything to stop him. Soooo, in our official court photo, Zach's being a bit inappropriate! They got a good laugh and did take a 2nd picture. However when printing the pics out, they printed the inappropriate pic and said they were going to hang it up in their hallway with several other memorable adoption photos! NICE!

After court, we went out for brunch with the whole crew that came along for the shindig. We went to Copper Oven who joined in the celebration by giving everyone free cookies.....which are huge and to die for. Which reminds me I only ate half of mine and I'm going to go eat the rest of my cookie! What a fun yet maybe not most appropriate bedtime snack!

Off to get some rest as I gave birth to 2 VERY LARGE children today! Dannon

Celebrating!

Donnie and I went to Lindsborg on Friday night to celebrate our 2nd anniversary a bit early. Our anniversary isn't actually until Tuesday next week, but given our busy weekly schedule we decide to have fun early! We went to a lovely bed and breakfast.....The Roseberg House. We were the only ones there, thus had the run of the house! We snuck around in the evening and scoped out all the other rooms. I was a nervous wreck and tried to pretend to be looking at things in the hallway while Donnie went in the rooms. But I eventually joined him cuz I wanted to see what our other options were should we go back. We loved our room....The Lincoln Room.....and would probably have a hard time staying in the other rooms. Our bed was to die for!!!!!

The Roseberg House

This was the window the the Lincoln Room.....looks nice doesn't it! :)

We ran around town doing fun things after we checked in. Went to a nice dinner and then took a leasurely stroll afterwards. Found this fun old time phone booth to play in.....

Lindsborg is known as Little Sweden and it has all these Swedish horse statues all over the place. I forced Donnie to pose with one. He was less than pleased about it. I told him it was for my blog and he said....is this what our life is coming to, having to pose all the time for your blog photos! Not very supportive if you ask me! :) He was a good sport about it though and by the end of our trip he had a few suggestions for blog photos!

I of course wanted to sit on my horse and it wasn't until after I sat on the first on that I saw a sign posted that said to PLEASE STAY OFF! This first horse I sat on Donnie thought looked a bit rough and scary thus suggested I pick another one to blog about!

So this is horse #2....much sweeter than the first. I was nervous to sit on it and kept telling him to hurry cuz there were cars driving around and I didn't want to offend the Swedes! :)

We finished up our night away from the kids (which I might add was the first night Zach has slept away from home without one of us) the next day by volunteering at the State Fair in an ice cream parlor. Every summer, I volunteer for Camp Hope which is a camp for kids who have or have had cancer. Anyhow, the ice cream parlor is run by the AMBUCS of Hutchinson and they give a percentage of their proceeds from the parlor to our camp. So my husband and I worked for 4 hours on Saturday at the booth. I may have photos of our work in action if my co-worker will give them to me. She stopped by the booth just to taunt us! :)

Anyhow....had a good time celebrating and spending some time by ourselves. Doesn't happen much anymore with all our kids!

Ending the post with a couple of pics of our adorable boy.....

He got some new fall pj's which I think he looks adorable in! This pj is a bit on the dangerous side as it has sharks on it.....and those of you who know me are aware of my severe fear of sharks!

He looks a bit serious in this picture, but the pjs and his daddy look cute so I added it in! These are also new pjs and they glow in the dark! I didn't know that until he wore them the first time....kindof freaked me out when I put him to bed!

I can't get the spacing to work again so this pic is not where I put it when I typed my post. GRRR...computers! (Sorry Barb)

Hope everyone had a good weekend. We have a big 2 weeks ahead of us. Tuesday is our anniversary, Wednesday is our court date for Autumn and Treyton's adoption, Saturday Treyton turns 18 and the following Friday Zachy turns 1!!!!! That's alot of celebrating in 2 short weeks!

Hugs to you.....Dannon

Weekend visitor

We had a weekend visitor for Labor Day Weekend. My niece Ashley joined us for a few days. She and Treyton love to hang out and decided to take advantage of a 3 day weekend! Donnie and I spent the weekend working on our remodeling.....actually we had some friends that did more of the work as it was out of our realm of expertise! The new bedroom in the basement is coming along. We also did some work in the kitchen that was unexpected.....Donnie tried to fix a drippy faucet unsupervised. I know have a new faucet w/ a fun sprayer!!! The kitchen also required some mopping as Donnie had a little water mishap in the process of "trying" to fix it himself. Thank God he has a friend who has plumbing knowledge!!!! :)

Here's a few pics from our weekend. Have some of Ashley, and of course some of Zachy! Zachy began "walking" this weekend! His biggest trek was about 8 steps! He also winked a ton at Ashley. I tried to get some pics of it but that's a hard thing to capture!

Zachy and my adorable niece Ashley! She loves her baby cousin! I had some stiff competition for Zach's attention this weekend!

He loved her cell phone.....actually he loves any cell phone. Treyton always bribes Zach to come to him by luring him in with his cell phone.

It's so tiring to be this cute.......

My attempts to capture the "wink"!

Ok, having some trouble with spacing issues, but too tired to stay up any longer to try and fix it!

Have a good week.....hopefully I'm able to report an adoption in the next week or so!.....dj

Moving Forward

Yesterday was an exciting day for us. We are finally completing the next step in Treyton's adoption. Yesterdaymorning Donnie and I had a meeting with SRS to complete paperwork necessary for Treyton's adoption. We signed an adoption placement agreement as well as a bunch of other stuff. Now the next step is getting the consent signed and the adoption packet over to our attorney! We are thinking court will be next week or the week after! YEAH!!!! We've been waiting a long time! Anyhow, below are pics of us signing our paperwork. Treyton also signed just for good measure!

Please pray the rest of the process goes smoothly and his adoption is done ASAP!!! We would really like to have him adopted before he turns 18 on September 13th!

Mr. Dangerous

Our weekend was not that exciting. I had orginally planned on being in Colorado with my sister and some of our college roommates, but ended up not being able to go. Instead, I was at home following around our new daredevil. Now that Zach is mobile, he's gotten braver than he needs to be.

Here is Zach harassing our lab Bailey.

Autumn has a small chair about Zach's size which he has taken a liking to. It's more of a stunt tool for him than a chair though!

Notice in all the pictures the little tufts of hair sticking out. He finally has hair long enough that it curls! However, it only does so behind his ears and at the base of his head. Looks kind of like an old man that keeps that part of his hair long to make up for what he doesn't have on the rest of his head! :)

Any guesses on how soon we make our first trip to the ER for a broken limb or stiches?????

First Timer

This is my first time entering the blog world!!! I wanted to chronicle the adoption process of our children, plus I view other blogs and it just looks kindof fun! Hope to add pics of the family soon....all new to me. At this point I'm being tutored by my co-worker Michelle!