Court Update

Hey everyone,

We are so sorry that it has taken us this long to update you all on our last court hearing which took place Monday Jan. 23rd 2012.  It was a rather frustrating day and we came back home once again with no answers.  To give you all a quick summary of what happened that day:

1. The judge was presented with a new option in our case which was to allow Ethan’s legal father be the one who decides if he wants to sign the papers so that we can complete our adoption. They pointed out the fact that if he has been the one making all previous decisions, he should make this one as well.  This would in turn take the bilogical father completely out of the picture.
2. The judge went on a tangent about the fact that this option is the easy way out and that his goal is not just to close the case but to bring justice.  He continued to express his frustration at the fact that while there are parents having kids and not taking care of them, the state is left with the financial responsibility.  Therefore, he wanted to look at the option of suing the biological dad for child support if he really wants to be in the picture.
3. It all ended with the judge saying he did not want to make a decision right away but wanted to meet in private with all the lawyers and case workers instead.  This meeting has not happened.

We continue trusting God but you can imagine how frustrating it is to not have any answers.  While the legal system takes its time, our sons are in limbo and we can’t finalize anything.  We need a miracle to happen, our sons deserve a normal life and we are coming up on one year of this.  Please continue praying for this process to be finalized. Thank you!

Our New Home!

After the disappointment that came from being denied the last house we applied for, we can now see that God truly had something better for us! We received a call from the amazing Teresa Turner to let us know that a house had just come up available for rent that night and was not even listed to the public yet! We made an appointment to go see it the next day and loved it! That same day we put in the application and the very next day we found out we were approved!  This house is a HUGE blessing because we will be paying for a 4 bedroom house in Killearn what most 3 bedroom houses pay in Tallahassee! God truly is taking care of us.  The boys will each have their own room which is going to be a huge help for us.  We might just sleep through the night for once!  We move in on February 18th 2012.  This house is not only a blessing but it is meaningful because it also represents another step towards preparing for the possible arrival of our baby girl. Please continue to pray for that situation, that God’s will be done!

 

Our Potential New Daughter Is Born!!

Today, our potential new daughter was born.  She is beautiful. 7 lb. 10 oz. and just gorgeous.  Talk about love at first sight.  Because mom in currently enrolled in a program to help her get back on her feet with this baby, the decision will ultimately be hers.  Our case worker has already told us that the possibilities of the baby being given to us are high but it is up to the biological mother to decide.  This decision could be made at any point within the next year which is how long her program is.

This is exciting and difficult at the same time.  You can imagine what uncertainty does to the mind! But we are praying blessings over this baby girl, claiming her for the life God has planned for her, and declaring that His will be done. Happy birthday baby girl!

Additional updates:

We were not approved for our new house but did get a 60 day extension to stay at our current house.  Please continue to pray that we find a 4 bedroom house within our budget before the 60 days are over. Thank you all!

3 HUGE Prayer Requests & BIG News

This post serves both as an update and a way of asking that you cover us now more than ever in prayer.  After you read this posting, you will understand why anxiety, frustration, and confusion levels are high. We feel emotionally, physically, and spiritually tired.

Prayer Requests:

1) We are supposed to vacate our current house in one week, by January 15th, and the landlord for the new house that we found has not replied to our application to let us know if we got the new house or not. As you can imagine, it’s a bit discomforting coming home to a lawn full of realty signs when the most important part of the moving process has not fallen into place… PRAY WE GET OUR NEW HOUSE!!

2) Monday January 9th is our next court date for the adoption process.  On this day, they will give Ethan’s biological father one last opportunity to choose either to sign the surrender of parental rights so that we can complete the adoption, or to ask for a case plan and continue pursuing custody. PRAY HE HAS A CHANGE OF HEART, THAT HE PUTS ETHAN’S WELLBEING BEFORE HIS OWN, AND THAT HE SIGNS THE PAPERS.

3) The biological mother of our boys is pregnant again. This time, with a baby girl. She is scheduled for a C-Section on Tuesday January 10th.  Though mom is in a program to help her keep this baby, there is a very strong possibility of the baby being put up for adoption.  Should this happen, guess who is getting the phone call! Yup! You guessed it. The Rios family could potentially be growing once again this year. PRAY FOR WISDOM, FINANCES, AND SANITY.

We thank you all for your faithful support and prayers.  We ask that you join us in these very important prayer requests and help us see our present situation through.  It is hard, but we know that HE is in control and we don’t want to forget the fact that He has blessed us so much more abundantly than we could have ever imagined! We love you all!

Last Adoption Home Visit!!

Hello everyone! We are so sorry that we have not been updating our blog as often in the recent months.  As you can imagine, life with three boys is pure chaos, and we are loving it!  We did want to thank everyone for their support and prayers.  We have been blessed with so much for our boys! From clothes to diapers to formula to wipes! God is faithful! Since going from a family of 2 with 2 incomes to a family of 5 with 1 income, nothing, absolutely nothing has been lacking! God is so amazing!

Tomorrow (Wed. Nov. 2nd 2011) we have the last home visit to complete our adoption paperwork.  This leaves only a few steps before everything is finalized.  We are still on somewhat of a hold due to the results of our last judicial review but our case workers don’t think anything is going to come from it and have advised us to jump-start the adoption process again from where we left off.  This way everything that is our part to do will be done and when the court gives the official green light, the process will be finalized quickly!

Thursday (Nov. 3rd 2011) the boys will have their last “goodbye” visit with their biological mom.  As part of this process, she gets one last four hour visit to spend with the boys.  I can’t imagine what an emotional time this will be, knowing that will be the last time she will see them.  Help us pray for everything to go smoothly both during our last home visit and during their last visit with her.

Thank you all for everything you’ve done! Be on the lookout for new updates! Our next court date is mid January! We love you all!

Judicial Review #1

Monday August 22nd 2011

Today was our court hearing for our case to go through what they call a Judicial Review.  This basically means that all parties involved in the case come before a judge and update him on what’s been going on so that the judge can make a decision as to how to proceed.  As you may remember, our case had officially changed to an adoption case.  While in the courtroom today, the biological mother testified to make it official that she was surrendering her parental rights so that we could legally proceed with the adoption.

Unexpectedly however, the biological father of our oldest walked into the courtroom and stated that he would like to go for custody of the child.  Due to this surprise, both the biological father and our oldest son must undergo DNA testing.  If the DNA proves that he is in fact the biological father, the state would then provide him with a Case Plan.  If he was to fully complete this Case Plan, he could be reunited with his son.

As you can imagine, today has been a very difficult day for us.  We trust God with all our might and know that these boys were hand chosen to complete our family.  The emotions of an adoption however are a lot to deal with at times, and this turn of events does not make it any easier.  Please help us pray for God’s will to be done.  We know we are meant to be a family and this will come to pass even if it takes a little longer than originally planned.  God is faithful.

A friend of our sent this word to us without even knowing what we had gone through today and we want to share it with you all:

Isaiah 43:5

“Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west.”

Court Date Change…

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to let you know that the judge has decided to push our court date back one week.  Instead of tomorrow August 15th we will be having our hearing on Monday August 22nd! Please still stand in prayer with us for this to go well.  We are really believing God for the entire adoption process to be finalized by December, before the year is up. Will you please join us in prayer?

New Case Status!

As of Friday July 22nd 2011 the status of our case has officially been changed to adoption! This means the goal is no longer for the kids to be reunited with their mom but to be adopted by us! We are extremely happy with how fast this whole process continues to move! God’s hand has been present throughout every step, big or small.

Today, Wednesday August 3rd we had a home visit by our Adoption Specialist and received more information on the next steps to come. Our next court hearing will be a judicial review which will take place on Monday, August 15th.  Please be praying for this hearing to go well and for every and any loose end in our case to fall into place.

We go by our Judge of judges, and His timing is much different than that of man’s timing. He is faithful!

It’s been two months!!

Monday July 18th marked 2 months since the trifecta came to our home.  Two months as parents!  This has by far been the craziest and hardest thing either of us has ever done.  At the same time, there is no bigger blessing and no bigger joy than to see a promise fulfilled (times 3) on a daily basis.

Since our last blog post, the trifecta has been able to meet the rest of our family from Puerto Rico and their grandparents and aunt from Pennsylvania.  It is a huge blessing to see how much support we are both receiving from our families in this journey.  We have also received some updates in regards to the adoption that we are not able to share at this time but will be able to soon!

This Saturday July 23rd Christina and I have been invited to be the guest speakers of our adoption agency’s MAPP Class.  These are the classes that we even had to go through as part of the process of getting licensed in the foster to adopt program.  It is insane to us how we were just taking these classes in October and less than a year later, we are guest speaking in them! God is awesome.

We will say that God’s hand is definitely in this whole process and that everything has been moving forward much faster than it usually does, though at times it seems like an eternity.  We are so thankful for His blessings on a daily basis.  We want to also thank so many of you who have been blessing us with donations that range from clothing, to toys, to everything in between.  Our boys arrived literally with a couple of trash bags filled with their belongings.  Thanks to you all however, they now have a pretty decent wardrobe; at least for this age! Thank you all so much!

Please stay tuned for some big news that we will bring to you as soon as we get the “go ahead” from our case worker. God bless!

One month with the Trifecta

Wednesday, June 15th 2011

The dictionary defines Trifecta as “a run of three wins or grand events“.  We couldn’t have a more appropriate nickname for our boys.  We are still in awe when we think back at all the time we waited and prayed for children, not knowing the way they would come to us.  Today makes exactly 1 month since the boys arrived at our home and our lives literally changed forever.  This post is a small overview of our life changes, our blessings, and our thoughts about the experience so far.

  (First Sunday Outfits bought by us)

(This special gift from Tio Tony represents all the schools he studied in)

How our lives have changed:

• We went from having no children to having 3 boys all under the age of 3.
• Our main focus & priority in life is no longer ourselves and each other but the boys.
• We have made some financial sacrifices in having Mommy quit her job to stay home with the boys.
• We have learned to be careful what we do and say around the house; Michael already repeated a joke between daddy and mommy and said “Cracker say what?” : )
• We are learning to function on little to no sleep.
• We are becoming master multitaskers!
• Peace & Quiet are a rare commodity at our house.
• Our cell phones are loaded with nothing but pictures of the boys.
• Our conversations center mainly around the boys.
• OCD is out the window and our house has never been messier!

Our blessings:

• We hear the words Daddy & Mommy on a daily basis.
• We are showered with hugs and kisses on a daily basis.
• We have laughed together like never before.
• Through the sacrifice of having a larger family and going to only 1 income God has provided in ways that show us that He is in control!
• Our families have blessed & supported us in many ways in order to take care of the boys.
• The advice and support from other parents has not ceased to help guide us.
• Our amazing church, Every Nation Tallahassee ,and church family have gone above and beyond to help us in this life-changing season. They have blessed us with diapers, wipes, formula, clothing, books, gift cards, and much more!
• We have been blessed with almost every single item we have needed for the boys.  We have had to buy very few things thanks to friends and family blessing us with everything from car seats, to toys, to high chairs, to strollers, to pack-&-plays, and more!

• We were able to find a good day school for the boys where they go for a couple of hours each day to learn about art, music, math, science, sensory stimulation, and much more!

Our thoughts about this experience:

From Angel – Wow! What an adventure this past month has been! As challenging as the experience has been as a whole, the more difficult aspects in my opinion have been the lack of sleep, how tired we feel, and dealing with the discipline of the boys.  It’s funny to see how the things I thought would be the most difficult (what the boys would call us, would the boys adapt to us, would we find an effective routine) have actually been the easiest! All in all, I am happier than I have ever been and so amazingly thankful to God for fulfilling His promise for Christina and I! When the days get tough, one of those little boys grabs me by the legs, or the neck, or sometimes the hair and gives me a big kiss and a squeeze that make everything else worth it! Thank you all so much for the amazing support!

From Christina - Well it has officially been one month today since the boys arrived! It has been a roller coaster of emotions, more so than I ever would have imagined. I think for me, being the woman, it was much more emotional than for Angel. It was a life changing experience in every sense of the word. And it still is. We knew taking in three boys under the age of 3 would be a whirlwind and our lives would be turned upside down, but nothing could have prepared us for this. In the beginning every day was a struggle in one way or another. We basically went from no kids to having three kids dropped off at our house with not much information to go on. The baby had an inhaler and acid reflux medication, neither of which we knew how to administer, or how often. The oldest had a nebulizer which again we didn’t know how often to administer but we at least knew how to work the machine. The baby had such a random and horrible eating schedule and cried even after a whole bottle of formula. Thankfully his former foster mom left us some
info on what he ate. A bottle of formula with a jar of baby food mixed in! I never would have figured that one out on my own. Needless to say that first day was a blur of frustration, fear and insanity! And that was just the beginning. The first few weeks I cried every day, multiple times. I just couldn’t stop myself. I doubted everything I was doing and if I could even handle having these three boys. Yes, me and Jesus talked A LOT those first weeks. We have figured out a nice routine now that works for us, and Angel is also home for the summer with me which is amazing!! God certainly knew what I needed! Each day still has it’s frustrations and we are all still learning. But looking back on this month it’s amazing at how drastically our lives have changed and how hard it is to remember being without three kids. We are still praying for the situation with the foster to adopt program and know that God is in control. Please continue to pray with us, and thank you all so much for everything you have done to help us in this process! We love you all!!

We can’t wait to be able to post pictures of the boys! In the mean time, we hope you enjoy our updates and continue praying as we continue to move forward in this process!