court date!

Yay!  Yay!  and Yay again!  Do we have some big news to share!

It has been a whirlwind of adoption stuff the last couple weeks.  We suddenly found out it would be possible to finalize Sweet P's adoption in American courts and rushed to gather all the papers and find a lawyer to make it happen before 2012.

Why? Well, 2011 tax laws grant an adoption credit of up to somewhere around $13,000.  This is entirely different from the expected change to an adoption tax deduction beginning in 2012.  The entire credit will be given back to us, so long as we spent that amount or more on specific adoption-related items... home study, background checks, lawyers, etc.  Next year we would (likely) only be allowed to deduct from the amount we pay in taxes, so long as what we owe is lower than the stated deduction amount.  How things are for our family, we don't pay anywhere near that much in taxes in a given year, so it wouldn't be as much of a benefit to us.

The excitement isn't about just having money in our pocket, but about the possibility of how we will use it!  We weren't expecting this added blessing and now we can use the credit toward adopting again.  It thrills my soul just to think about it!  ...and that it will likely happen sooner thanks to this credit.

The reason we are waiting until the absolute last minute of 2011 to get this done is because of custody laws in Nevada.  We have to reside in state for exactly six months before we are considered under Nevada's authority to deal in matters of custody.  You probably don't remember but we drove into the 110 degree heat on June 28.  We had no choice but to take this down to the wire!

We asked friends to pray with us last week that a judge would kindly squeeze us into the schedule on December 29 or 30.  Many judges are on vacation for the holidays, so this was definitely praying for a Christmas miracle.  A phone call from our lawyer's office came yesterday saying we got an appointment for Friday!  All praise to the Lord!

December 30 is a big day for Sweet P!  She will get her adoption decree and have her name officially changed to our family surname.