It was a typical Monday around our house yesterday; a little time at the courthouse, a little hike in the forest. Obviously, not exactly typical! Let me back up and explain. Back in 07 we adopted the Chick from Taiwan. Completely legal, official, and binding.

Fast forward to January/February of 2015. Upon providing our documents from the adoption to the immigration lawyers in the UK responsible for obtaining our visas, we were informed that the UK did not recognize adoptions from Taiwan, and therefore, she would be denied a visa. This was definitely not something we were expecting. The only way to actually get Chick a visa was to re-adopt her in the state of Washington, and obtain a US birth certificate. Then the UK would give her a visa; which is good because she’s gosh darn dang excited to move to London.

She is under the impression we will be lunching with the Duchess of Cambridge, or at least popping by to see the children, and say hi.

I’m not entirely sure she understands that the likelihood of us even standing in a crowd to see the royal family is unlikely. Though if the Duke and Duchess need any help with the babies, Chick is happy to volunteer!

Yesterday, we walked into the courthouse and received an official, legal, binding adoption decree….again. All the proper documents are now in the hands of the UK, and hopefully, we will have our visa’s in hand by June 21 when we plan to fly to London. Seeing as we just rented out our house here in the US and our tenant moves in June 22, lets hope there are no more hiccups in this process.

Since that pretty much took half the day (since the court we went through was in Everett), the kids took the day off from school. Don’t they look super-duper upset about that? Of course, the one snap our lawyer took of us looking at the camera, the kids both look utterly unhappy. For the Boy, that’s normal, he’s a teenager. I don’t know exactly why Chick looks like that except that maybe she finally realizes what a looney family she’s stuck with.

That’s life my little Chickadee!

So what do you do after spending the morning driving to and from court? Go hiking of course!

We had been to Rattlesnake Lake last year just to check it out, but we hadn’t gone up the hiking trail before. It seems it wasn’t for the faint of heart, and Chick stormed right up that mountain with nary a complaint. Which is remarkable considering we’d never taken her hiking before, and it turns out to have been a bit of a hike.

Rattlesnake Ledge

LOCATION

Snoqualmie Region — North Bend Area

LENGTH

4.0 miles, roundtrip

ELEVATION

Gain: 1160 ft.

Highest Point: 2078 ft.

We were probably about .1 mile from he viewing ledge (though we didn’t realize it, all we saw was more serious uphill hiking, so we turned around). It was very, very pretty though.