She is OFFICIAL

Odette legally became Odette Adrien Coleman on December 16th. Like every other step that we have gone thru since we started this journey the process to adopt her here in the US was much longer and harder that we thought it would be. Because she was here her adoption changed from an international adoption to a domestic adoption so we had to redo our home study. An international home study lasts for 18 months where a domestic home study lasts only 6. Then we had to wait on a letter from the USCIS that allowed us to finish our adoption process. All of the other 5 families got their letters within a few months of the first letters that went out. Ours took much longer for some reason and when we finally received ours it was the wrong letter so we had to wait two weeks for the correct one to come. Our lawyer worked hard to get everything together and we had a court date of December 13th. We counted the days for a couple of weeks and then the morning of the 13th we woke up to snow and ice in Knoxville and found out that the Chancellery Courts were closed for the day. So we rescheduled for Thursday the 16th at the same time as the Zimmermans and the Stouts were finalizing their adoption. Again on Thursday we woke up to ice in Knoxville. Court was opening 2 hours late due to the ice so after a crazy morning of trying to figure out exactly what time our court time was we all made it to the court house. From there we had to wait almost 2 hours to be seen. A friend texted and said "So ironic... waiting!!! Should it "end" any other way!" Which is SO true. Nothing in this process has been easy, it has been a whole lot of hurry up on our part and then a lot of waiting. God was sweet in working out the timing of the court date so all three of the families left waiting to finish their adoption could go and finish together. He was so faithful in finishing the work that he started in our families. Once we got in the Chancellors office it took longer for all three families to get in the door than it did for paperwork to be signed. So around 12:45 pm that day Odette officially became a Coleman followed a few minutes later by Islande Stout and Valancia Zimmerman.