Saturn's Day, 3/31/2012

The yard needed to be mowed today, but the rain prevented it. I was glad for the reprieve. Tomorrow I think we will pay our friends' son Jeremy to mow it. He has done a good job for us in the past, and I really need to spend time working on my backlog of handouts for the big conference coming up in June rather than on yard work. I think we're going to engage our other friend John Land to be our "landscaping" contractor instead of a company like TruGreen or ChemLawn. He has his own landscaping business, and he goes to church with us. So I'm glad to give him our business, and I think he will do a better job than a corporate flunky out to turn a crank and earn a minimum wage pay.

That's a lot of talk about maintenance, but from an aesthetic point of view, the yard (while a bit overgrown and weedy) is nicely green and has some patches of flowers coming back up. In our yard, as everywhere else, spring started early. I am confident that with John's help with fertilizer and weed killer and Jeremy's mowing skills, the yard may look better this summer than it has since we moved in.

Frigg's Day, 03/30/2012

This was a momentous week in our family as our adoption of Destiny was finalized on Wednesday. We drove up to Delaware on Tuesday afternoon and met with her birthmother for a little while before heading on up to Wilmington to spend the night and be ready for the hearing at 10:30 a.m. the next day. The visit with Destiny's birthmother went well, and it was good to "break the ice" with her in such a setting. We agreed to meetings like that at least once a year with her as long as she wants them, so we will be doing it again sometime in 2013.

On Wednesday we got up and met up with our friends Bobby & Melissa Carter, who had also driven up from Mechanicsville on Tuesday so they could be with us during the hearing. I think it's fair to say that Melissa is Susan's best friend, and so it was a blessing to have her and her husband there at the hearing. We walked over to the courthouse together, which was only a couple of blocks from our hotel, and there we also met up with the lawyer we've been working with an Danielle, the representative of Adoptions from the Heart, the agency that matched us up with Destiny's birthmother. When the judge was ready for us, we went in to the courtroom. The judge, Judge Chapman, was friendly and tall. Very tall, but also very friendly. He greeted us informally at first, and after some discussion, he called the official business to order. The official business consisted of the lawyer asking Danielle about the adoption process and getting her testimony on the record that all the legal requirements were met and that Destiny was thriving and happy in our home. Once that was complete, the judge had an informal extension of the hearing and read passages of scripture to encourage Destiny and us in our journey forward from that point, and he asked for each party to share thoughts about the new family that was forming. Everyone was encouraging and supportive. Then we took a dozen photos or so, with each person getting a chance to hold Destiny.

We received the official order of the court that Destiny should be known henceforth as Destiny Michelle Johnson and that we should be recognized as her parents. It was a great day, truly a landmark day in our lives.