Adoption completed

This morning all 7 of us trooped into Family Court and with a few simple words, our adoption was official and complete. It was a little anti-climatic because we didn't even say anything. Our lawyer made a point of thanking the NS Department of Justice and NS Community Services for their efforts in completing our adoption. Most people assumed that after the earthquake and the kids left Haiti, everything was done.

Not the case!!!

And yet it's true that the NS authorities have done everything they could to expedite this adoption. But there is a process in place and nothing about our process matched the established process. Every step took time as the authorities decided how to proceed.

But today we have finality. And we're so grateful for the start of 2011 and the "adoption order granted".



So, what's next?

1) apply for NS Birth Certificates (Especially important as the kids don't have their original birth certificates. Maybe some day we can obtain those for them.)

2) Continue the process of obtaining Canadian Citizenship (Especially important because the kids don't have passports from Haiti and can't enter any other country without special permission/VISAs/etc)

3) Apply for Canadian passports (See #2)

4) Apply for American Citizenship (Not looking forward to that process, but we'll give it a shot even with the lack of our original documents.)

5) Submit an application to Citizenship & Immigration to amend Gaelle's Document of Landing to refelct the correct spelling of her name. (Through no fault of ours, her name is incorrect on this document that she needs to hold onto for the rest of her life.)

Whew! But we'll keep plugging away and hopefully we'll be able to cross out all of those items from our list except for #4. Stay tuned.