First trip as a Finally Forever Family

Katie Hutyler Start Date: Aug 8, 2024 - End Date: Feb 7, 2025
  • Anaheim, CA, United States of America

My Travel Story

by: Katie Hutyler Start Date: Aug 8, 2024 - End Date: Feb 7, 2025
After more than 3 years fighting to be a forever family, we are finally able to live our lives.  We want nothing more than to celebrate our journey, start fresh, and enjoy some time together before getting on with real life.

Since we are still technically in foster care we can't show our faces, hence the emojis in our photos.

In June of 2021, we learned of an infant in foster care who may be our niece, we urged our brother to contact the state agency and get involved with this potential child, but he did not engage.  After a few weeks I had to take matters into my own hands and reached out to the agency myself.  I let them know that I was the sister of the alleged father and I wanted to do whatever I could to be available and a part of this child's life. I was told to complete background check documents, and I'd be added to the baby’s file, but she was being reunified with her bio-mom but she was doing well. 

40 day after reunification I was asked to join a zoom court hearing at 2pm in the afternoon.  The judged ordered the infant, now 100 days old, to be removed from her bio-mom and placed in our home due to several health and safety concerns.  The baby was at our door at 5:15pm with the clothes on her back and a pacifier.  The state gave us some diapers & wipes, a playpen, a car seat and went on their way.  We had never seen her until now, nor had we ever known if she had any major health problems or delays due to her experiences. She was absolutely beautiful, and our bond was instant.  Keep in mind, this was literally one week (7 days) before our youngest of three children turned 18, we started over. 

The next three years came with many ups and downs, scares, worries, anxieties, pains, and so much more with the unpredictability and threats from her bio-mom. The years also came with some surprisingly grown things from her bio-dad (my brother).  He essentially gave up our sibling relationship and relinquished his parental rights, knowing it was the best move for this baby to thrive. The years also helped us meet some great people in her maternal (bio-mom) family who we have established very close relationships with, we meet with them virtually every month and travel across the state to visit them every year.  Finally, in June of 2024 the state terminated her bio-mom’s parental rights, and we moved toward adoption. 

Now, we are in the final stages of adoption, and we need nothing more than some time to unwind from the stress and upheaval of the last 3 years.  Some time to just be with each other and enjoy our new forever family.  We want nothing more than to take her to Disneyland to allow her to just be a kid, relax, and have fun without all the stress and pain she has had to endure over the last 3 years.
  • Anaheim, CA, United States of America

Updates

2

  • Still Waiting

    Still waiting
    We are still waiting in the adoptions until for all the paperwork and things to finalize before we can get an official adoption date.
    We were so hopeful things would be done by now, we’ve had her since (almost) the beginning so things should be easy, right? I guess that isn’t the case when you rely on others to do things.
    Cheers to finalizing before the end of the year?!

  • Still Waiting

    Still waiting
    We are still waiting in the adoptions until for all the paperwork and things to finalize before we can get an official adoption date.
    We were so hopeful things would be done by now, we’ve had her since (almost) the beginning so things should be easy, right? I guess that isn’t the case when you rely on others to do things.
    Cheers to finalizing before the end of the year?!

Adventure Registry

  • Ride on luggage

    200

  • Air miles

    1,000