It's official

We all share the same last name now. We went to court yesterday.

It was such a crazy day. The night before DH had been coughing up a lung and I finally went into the family room and tried to sleep in front of the fire. Then, a couple of hours later, I heard dripping. At first I thought someone was going potty for way too long. Then I realized it was coming from my fridge. My worry was that my fridge was leaking and it was going to ruin the walls in my basement before ever getting to enjoy them. So I spent a while trying to figure out how to get the grill off of the fridge. In the end, I went online and found out that the sound I was hearing was the defrost cycle and was totally normal. A few hours later D and T woke up and started talking loudly and woke up the rest of the house.

So you can imagine how happily we started out the morning.

I got the kids off to school and then came home and started to work on putting outfits together for each kid. The morning just disappeared. And while that happened my house looked more and more like a tornado found it.

Then the memories really started. I picked S up from school and the 3 youngest kids came with me to get the older two from school. We walked into the office to request that M and T be pulled from their classes. S went up to the principal who happened to be seated between the secretaries and said, "What's your name?" The principal responded and asked the same question back. S replied and the principal commented on S's beautiful name. I expected S to start talking about how she picked her own name. This is usually what happens when someone tells her she has a beautiful name. But not this time! Instead she said, "Did you ever know that I had something up my bum?" (I am not even kidding one single bit about this.) The principal's eyes got HUGE. I knew what she was talking about and said, "Um, she has had a bit of a wiping issue." There was relief on the principal's face and a little smile. Then S quickly adds, "But I got it all off." And then S walks over and gets up on a chair and starts doing a behavior that is on our list of most important to eliminate. I was ready to crawl in a hole. Fortunately we were able to provide a little humor for the ladies in the office.

Then we came home and got the S and the older two ready and headed out the door. Luckily, we arrived without problem. My MIL and good friend R and her daughter were there. We headed upstairs to our courtroom and went through the questions. Everything went super smoothly (or maybe it didn't and I just didn't catch that part. After, we took some pictures. The judge was really great. He took all five up to his bench and let the kids wear his robe, etc. Then we went searching for an ice cream place and ended up at a super fun place that literally makes your ice cream right there.

The afternoon was back to normal. We had swimming lessons and dance lessons. No problems were solved by the judge making it all legal. I do think it will matter to all of us that we are legally a family and not just guardians. And the judge seemed thrilled to do the case. He said there are 60 or 70 something felony cases in court today. It's still less than thrilling if you ask me. Ideally biomom and dad would have gotten married and decided to do what it takes to raise happy and productive kids. But ideal isn't always reality. So we are going to make the most of this and see if we can give these kids the best chance at a good life as possible.