FINALLY!!!!!

At some point our children were going to actually become our children (legally). The time has finally come. We have a court date to finalize our adoption, making the kids offical and legal Hawley's. As of April 2nd they will be ours, all ours, he he he.

They will not only change their last names to Hawley but we are playing with their other names a bit also. Vera, who already has 2 middle names with which she could not bear to part, wanted to add a middle name given to her by us. SO... she will be legally and officially (and when she's in trouble), reffered to as Vera Selestina Maria Berlin Hawley. She is quite pleased with her new name.



Ricky was a tough one. His full legal first and middle name was Ricky Angelo. We were advised by our case workers to think about giving him a longer first name to work with (ie. Richard) so he could choose to use a fuller name when he is older. Also because he is a Junior they thought it would be a good idea to change his middle name or something so he would not still share his birth fathers exact same name. We realized that the name Richard was not a name we were very fond of as well as it just does not fit our little Ricky. Plus we did not want our little Hispanic boy to sound like an Englishman (RIchard Hawley). Wasn't that the name of one of the members of the British band Pulp? And also knowing that we did not want to change what we call him (his identity) we knew we need to choose a name that Rick or Ricky could be short for. Long story short (?) we decided to give him the name Frederico, partly because we can still call him Rick and partly after my dear papa and grandpa. SO... Frederico Angelo Conrad Hawley will be his legal name. Conrad is a family name from Joe's family, his grandfathers name. But please continue to call him Ricky :)



Ana was also a Junior of sorts as her full first name (Rayana) was her birth mom's name. But since we all call her Ana, and that is what she has been called even before moving in with us, we thought shortening her name to just Ana would be appropriate. But we wanted her to have a longer name to work with than just Ana, and she also wanted to add a new middle name like her brother and sister did. SO... Anais Virginia Carmen Hawley will be her new legal name. They all helped to choose these names since we felt that they would appreciate them more.



So that is our big news. There will of course be a large party to celebrate the finalization of what is already our family. You will all be notified when the plans are made. When we told Ana that we were going to finally go to court to adopt them she said "but Mom, we're already adopted, we've been a family for a long time already." She is exactly right! This is really just a formality.