The Energizer Cowboys who kept things humming at the reunion

The Energizer Cowboys who kept things humming at the reunion
These kids know how to have fun!

Saturday, June 4, 2011

June updates

Here's a few pix of our fun new swimming pool...at least the part for the bigger kids.







Travis learned how to flirt with girls at the pool yesterday! Ethan, Laurie, and Brendan learned to defend themselves on the log jam/monkey ropes. It was the only beautiful day so far this week. So glad we went then. Steve was at the temple from 8-2:30, enjoying the peace and quiet...!



Today Steve tended the boys, while I did quilt camp with Laurie. He had to do some multi-tasking to survive, but only burned 1 pizza.



Rob and Kathryn got home today. The next hearing on the adoption is on the 21 of June. Their lawyers are forcing the judge to require that previous decisions be complied with, i.e. DNA proof, home evaluation, etc. To \night Laurie and Brendan went to Nizhoni's softball game, and played for a while. Both the girls got a lot done at camp. We had 22 kids, and about 12 leaders. Tomorrow...more of the same, but it will be easier, as they now know how to thread a machine, and the needle, and sew semi-straight! We hope to have the top done before we leave on Friday for Tooele.
 
More on the court proceedings:
Here is a more detail on what happened at court from Rob: I guess the judge came in with an attitude and wasn't going to hear the case. He had reviewed the past judgements and still had the opinion that LDS family services used fraud to do this adoption. The judge kept telling our attorney to move on. I guess it got real heated and he said he wasn't going to move on until he got the information out.
      Luckily the other attorney had the birth father on the stand and he testified that he went to SLC and met with LDS family services before Travis was born. That kind of self-incriminated himself. He never told anyone that before. If we would have knpwn that at the first, I think it would have been settled by now. The judge did admit that the courts made a mistake and there was no fraud involved.


Mom was right on what the courts ordered. They appointed a G.A.L for Travis. He will do the home study on all 3 families involved. They only problem with that, the next hearing is in 3 weeks, and they won't have time to do the study before then. They said if that's is the case, we will have to have another hearing after this one in 3 weeks. We have to have a DNA test on Travis. They are telling us that we have to go to Colorado Springs before the next court date to do this. Hopefully they can send us the kit and we can do it here.

They next court date is the 21st and 23rd of June. They have it scheduled for 2 days because of all the testimonies that will be presented. So we might have to be back in Denver for a week. We didn't get to go to court on Tuesday. Only our attorneys knew we were there. We were the secret weapon. Hopefully next time we will be able to testify.

Another thing in our favor, because the Birth Father filed the wrong paper work. He filed a allocation of parental responsibility, instead of petition of paternity, we now have rights. The state of Colorado, after having the child in the home for more than 6 months, we can intervene and we now have rights. If this drags on for more that 1 year, the burden now goes to the other side, and they have to show that we are unfit to have Travis. That's why they are trying to rush this case. The judge still wants to do everything required by law, but doesn't want to be the reason this drags on for more than the year.

So as it looks, worse case scenario, They won't terminate the father's rights and they will give him visitation rights. He would have to start paying child support to us, but we will still have custody of him. We wouldn't be able to finalize until his rights are terminated. Our attorney said in past cases like this, the father looses interest after a few months and quits paying. At that point, we could have his rights terminated. So we shall see.
     All and all the hearing went good for us. At least the judge said he needs to start going by state statue instead of skipping around. So our side felt real good about it. They said the birth father's attorney was pretty upset when she left the court house, so the tides are turning. Any questions, give us a call.
    Thanks. Rob and Kathryn.

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