Our Day in Court

April 29, 2010 was a big day in the Limmer household. We all got spiffed up and trudged off to the courthouse for a hearing to finalize our readoption. After about 2 minutes of questions from the judge, it was all over and Moses was officially a Limmer.

For those of you who aren't familiar with this process, readoption in the U.S. was necessary for us because of the type of visa that Moses came home on. He traveled on an IR-4 visa which essentially made us his permanent guardians. He still legally went by his Rwandese name on all official documents. Every state has different laws and procedures for readoption, and because international adoption is fairly infrequent in Wyoming there are no international adoption laws. You just have to follow the same procedure as a domestic adoption. So, we had to run a notice in the newspaper, informing Moses' birth parents in Rwanda of the impending hearing (makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?), fill out the appropriate paperwork with our attorney, and wait until we had Moses in our custody for 6 months. Then came the final hearing with the judge.

Judge Park was very kind and I think we were a pleasant diversion for him. I'm sure he has very little occasion for "happy" hearings. He gave Moses a teddy bear that Asia promptly named Mike. When we were leaving, he said, "Come back and see me again, Moses!" I laughed and actually turned back around and said, "No! It won't be a good thing if he comes back here to see you!" If Moses ends up back in that courtroom, he is going to have more to worry about then just going to jail; he's going to have to deal with one upset mama! :)

The day was best summed up by Asia when she said, "Moses turned Limmer today." Yes, he did, sweetie. Yes he did.