Sophie is legally Sophie

Today was a very exciting day and a sad day for us as well. Our little girl legally became Sophie Lee-Nguyen Belz as we paid a visit to the St. Charles County Family Courts to complete her name change and the final step of the adoption process. It will be nice in a sense because everything such as her SS card, COC papers, insurance cards have her birth name on them. That sometimes is a challenge like visiting an urgent care and you get some moronic health care person, hand them her insurance card an they of course look at you and say, "Your relation to her is?" , uh she's our neighbor's friend's cousin's dog walker!? So the guessing game will no longer be a part of things anymore. But what we have to look forward to is more back-end paperwork with the USCIS to change her Certificate of Citizenship, Social Security card, and the vast array of other docs that go along with this.

But it is sad that she is no longer be Hang Thanh Nguyen. That beautiful name that her birth mother gave her on January 15, 2007 at the Binh Duong Hospital. We are glad though that we incorporated her birth last name into her legal name, as it means so much to us and we hope it does to her later in life. Sophie knows that her name in Viet Nam was "Hang" just ask her and she will tell you. What's in a name? So much history in such a short amount of time.

Wishing that we had a great court picture to share with everyone (thus the random Google generated search photo above), but our Judge was a complete JERK! He was cold from the moment we entered the court, during testimony and was just down right foul. You would think with all the crud he deals with in regards to family courts, this would be a ray of sunshine in his day, but NOPE not this guy! Maybe a hey, congrats to you all, or your daughter is beautiful, NOTHING......A disappointment to say the least and NO PHOTOS. Hey at least these folks have a judge with a semi-smile on his face! But it is over and done with, so turn that page. Our attorney who is a family friend and helped us out pro bono gave Sophie a little blue hippo stuffed animal who we have officially named Hang now.

Dear Sophie Lee-Nguyen Belz. We love you so very much!