Recognition of Foreign Adoption

I wanted to say thank you to everyone that stopped by and said "hey". I hope I got everyone's blogs listed that left a link. I will get to everyone's questions in the next few days along with some news of our own that I can finally share with everyone. If you didn't have a chance to post a hello, it's not to late and I don't bite. Well I don't bite anymore; after a well-deserved spanking and lengthy time-out when I was five years old for biting my friend Debbie's finger, I am proud to say I am now reformed and don't bite anymore. All though for the record, she did not believe me when I told her I had the "sharpest teeth in the whole wide world" and stuck her finger out for me to show her just how lethal they were.

I digress, I want to pass along some information for other adoptive families and PAP's out there. Dede found a lawyer that both of us are using to obtain Texas birth certificates for our sons. This is different than readopting a child once they are home, this is the state of Texas recognizing our foreign adoption, which allows us to get the birth certificate. The paperwork was very easy to fill out and the lawyer accepted photocopies of everything. We are required to take the originals to court with us. It is not necessary to go to court as the lawyer can go to court on our behalf if we need her to, but in our case we are going to go for the ceremony. We submitted our paperwork last week and our court date is Sept 2nd, so it goes quickly. We can get a copy of Artem's new Texas birth certificate that day if we choose to. The lawyer has a flat fee of $350 to process the paperwork and there is a court filing fee of $227. If you are interested in the lawyer's information please send me an email and I would be happy to pass along the information. And a big THANK YOU to Dede for finding the lawyer for us. It has made this part of the process so easy and heaven knows there's not a lot in IA that is easy.