harper's story...part 3

We weren't able to get an appointment with the judge until Tuesday morning. This was actually not the judge we were supposed to see...he was booked for a solid week.  We said we couldn't live with that, so the attorney was able to get us an appointment with someone else.

Our rental car in Oklahoma:

Sunday afternoon, K. came to visit and see Harper.

Otherwise, we did a lot of this:

...and this.  

I'm telling you, it was pretty boring.

Tuesday morning finally arrived, and we got Harper all dressed up to see the judge.

In front of the courthouse.

Waiting in the hall before going into the courtroom.

K. was sworn in on the stand and did her relinquishment of Harper in front of the judge.  Our Oklahoma attorney would ask a question/read a statement, the translator would translate it into Marshallese, K. would answer, the translator would translate her answer back into English.  It was a long process.  

We got to do our finalization hearing right then too...so we don't have to go back later.  Kyle and I were both sworn in on the stand and had to answer some questions.

As soon as the court went into recess, we gave K. her gifts, took a few pictures, and then hit the road for some civilization....It was 3.5 hours to Norman.

At one of our pit stops, we saw this tank. So exciting!

We got settled into the new hotel...one that had an indoor pool and Red Robin right across the parking lot.  We were back in business with swimming, an Internet connection, and chocolate chip cookies in the lobby. :)

harper's story...part 2

We woke up the next morning, anxious to get ready and get to the hospital to see the baby.  Before we could even do that, the translator called and said K. and the baby were being released right then. They would bring the baby to us at the hotel.

What the?!?

So, less than fifteen minutes later they showed up at the hotel. We got to meet K. for the first time (we'd talked to her on the phone and texted several times before our trip).  They were there less than five minutes.  Sooo different than our other placements.

Anyway, as soon as they left everyone was wanting to hold the baby.

We decided on Harper Malia Robb.  

Malia is Hawaiian for Mary, which is after my grandmother and Kyle's mom.

The hotel where we were was a total joke, in more ways than one, so Kyle jumped up to see if there was somewhere else in town we could stay. That was actually a pretty big job...we were in the middle of nowhere.  I'm not kidding.  But, thankfully, there was and we packed up and moved down the street.  The new place was super great to us, and we were there 4 days waiting to see the judge.

I was scrolling through my Instagram feed (on one of the instances where we could get Internet connection) and saw that our neighbors had posted this:

I admit, that I totally deserved something after chalking their driveway with BYU trash talk after BYU beat the Aggies last year.  However, I think spray paint in the grass is waaay over the top (and not cool since it now will be there all winter...maybe I should pray for snow).

We just hung out those first couple of days

We had pizza in the hotel, but couldn't swim because it was a seasonal outdoor pool.  

The one good thing about the middle of nowhere, was Braums. We may have gone almost every day.

The hospital where Harper was born.  We drove by one day to at least see it.

We drove around and found this...we can always find a Beavers reference!  Bosten jumped out to take a picture, so that we could send it to Papa in Australia.

harper's story...part 1

Harper's story started long before our crazy Oklahoma adventure. You know that we've been hoping/trying to adopt for five years.  We haven't talked about it much, but there were some major disappointments and heartaches along with several almosts.  At times, we were ready to throw in the towel but we knew in our hearts that we couldn't.

We've been talking with an attorney out of Mesa, Arizona for about the last year who facilitates adoptions mostly in Arkansas and Oklahoma with the Marshallese (Pacific Islands) community.  Evidently there is quite a large population of them living in those states...who knew.  This attorney served his mission in the Marshall Islands, and obviously speaks the language.  We heard about him from one of the adoption blogs that I read.  I emailed her for his contact information, and she hooked us up.  I talked via email with her, along with another family who used this attorney, to ask a million questions, get feedback, and as much information as we could about this option.  We actually had a match with him a year ago, but at the last minute, the way we were going to finance the adoption fell apart and we had no other option but to walk away.  It was really hard, to say the least.  

In the spring, we had heard rumors of the big changes coming to LDSFS, which scared us because we knew we were in trouble (we are older and already have 2 kids). We got serious about finding a way to make a private adoption happen.  We had two possible situations come up over the summer, but for different reasons they both didn't work out. 

Fast forward to September.  We got an email from the Arizona attorney saying that he had a possibility for us.  We were cautiously excited.  We thought we had approximately 3 weeks to get ready for the baby, and started quietly getting ready.  It was scary to involve the boys this time, but we felt pretty good about the possibility of this being our new baby girl.

Friday, October 3rd, I was awake at 5am by a phone call saying that the baby had been born and that we'd better get to Oklahoma.  (Kyle said he'd been awake since 3am and knew that today was the day.)  We jumped up and started throwing things together, booking airline tickets, making arrangements, etc. and were on the way to the airport by 10am.

We flew from Salt Lake to Denver, and had a layover. We got something to eat, and face timed with my parents in Australia.  The short layover ended up being a 2 hour delay.

We got to Tulsa at 8pm. We grabbed our luggage, and then discovered that our rental car reservation wasn't right and they were trying to fix it by putting us in a much smaller vehicle.  We were tired and getting grumpy, but after about 30 minutes or so,  it got worked out.  On the way to the car, Kaden happened to look over at the baggage claim area and noticed one of our suitcases.  I don't know how we'd missed it, but were so thankful that he had noticed it (and that it had happened to stop right where it needed to so that we would see it).  It was a tender mercy for sure.

We had a 3.5 hour drive to the middle of nowhere, to the small town where Harper was born.  We were on toll roads, so every time the boys would get to sleep, it would be time to stop and pay the toll.  So annoying! We finally got to the hotel and checked in around 12:30am.  We were all pretty wiped out, and crashed as soon as we got settled in the motel.

sweet baby girl

Harper Malia Robb

October 3, 2014

Born in Oklahoma

More details coming soon. 

l