The Mulders: Casyn's Story Continued...

I figured I better continue with Casyn's adoption story for everyone that is curious...where do I even begin. The next 9 months were filled with so much anxiety, stress, nervousness, excitement and upsets but well you know how it turned out!! Here goes nothing...

Once Casyn's Birthmother's rights were revoked (meaning she could not change her mind) we set off to see if her Birthfather would sign his rights over. For one reason or another (honestly still don't get his reasoning) he was not willing to sign. Actually only 10 days after Casyn came home with us he said to our lawyer that he "would think" about signing the papers and let us know by the end of the weekend. Well...he never called back!! Actually he didn't call back until January when our lawyer made a call to him. Keep in mind this is 6 months later with him doing absolutely nothing...not caring about her, wondering how she was doing, letting us know he still hadn't decided, etc...absolutely nothing. Then when our lawyer did get a hold of him he was get this...in jail!

Needless to say once talking to him he still wasn't interested in signing the papers and still was giving us the complete run around. On pins & needles wondering each day if this is going to happen...will Casyn ever be a part of our family?? After I another 5 months, several court hearings, many calls, packages mailed and so on and so forth a trial date was finally set to terminate his rights. This meant that he would be on the phone (he lives out of state), we would each testify in the court room, we would have witnesses, a judge, our lawyer and social worker in the court room.

That day finally came...I was a ball of nerves wondering if his parental rights would finally be terminated and praying that Casyn would soon officially be ours. There are way more hoops to jump through than you ever could imagine!! We were told to report to the court house at around 1:00 there we could get the low down from our lawyer what would happen, get our witnesses ready to go and officially start this trial. Surprisingly I was not as nervous as I had thought I would be...granted we had never heard the Birthfather's voice so I was a little uneasy about that. The trial finally started...Brandon on my left side, my dad on the right of me as he would be testifying for us as well. He & Casyn have a special bond it's too cute!!

The trial started lots of questions were asked by both parties...it was too funny though every question that was asked Birthfather dug himself a bigger hole. The judge kept rolling her eyes and interrupting him because he was completely off task. Brandon & I kept slightly shaking our heads because the things he was saying were not true. After a little over an hour the judge asked him for his final statement. He had this long drawn out explanation with no true statements that would impact anything in there. The judge starts...so now for my verdict...tears welling up in our eyes this is the moment we had been waiting for...

She says, "Without a doubt I will be terminating your parental rights today Mr......."You had ample amount of time to do anything to either help with the costs of raising this little girl and/or trying to get yourself prepared to welcome her into your home."Your rights are definitely terminated!!"

The words we had so longed to hear...the only thing was we had another 30 days to wait to finalize. If nothing was done on his end then we would officially have our finalization court date to legally give Casyn our last name.

30 days later the day came, our lawyer went to court and Casyn was officially part of our family!! Although it was a long long journey to have Casyn officially part of our family we could not imagine it any other way. She is the perfect addition to our family and makes us complete!!

Here are some pictures from that...