Adoption Finalized for Benjamin

It took seven months to do it.
Benjamin is now officially declared as our son and proudly bears the last name "Morrison".
Our family stood before a judge and Hyeondong Lee became Benjamin Lee Morrison.

I give sincere thanks to Dillon International for being very helpful from the very start of the application process.
I also like to express a hearty thanks to the Eastern agency in Korea for taking on a difficult adoption case that is so characteristic of adopting older kids from institutions, that other agencies in Korea don't want to get involved with.

Many of you may have been wondering how Benjamin is doing since he was adopted seven months ago as a fourteen years old boy from Korea.  He lived all his fourteen years at an orphanage.
To make the long story short, he is doing very well, and is doing great in school also.
We had some challenging moments (the first five months were very difficult).
I plan to share with the readers some of those difficulties we faced in later blogs, and share how we were able to cope and come out of it.  I hope we are out of it.

But there is no denying that there has been some tremendous changes in his attitude and in his behavior.  We are very fortunate and we thank God that we have come so far.

But for now, I just want to share with you that Benjamin's adoption has been finalized.

Our whole family went to the court to witness Benjamin officially being declared as our son.  Ben's grandparents also joined in this special occasion.  Ben is holding the Certificate of Family Membership given by the court.

The adoption finalization was granted by the Hon. John Henning, the judge that swore us in.  What's interesting was though, this was the same judge that finalized our Joseph (behind Ben next to Mom) 10 years ago.  I introduced Joseph to him saying that he finalized Joseph's adoption when he was four years old.  The judge was pleasantly surprised to see our family again after ten years.

Benjamin with Mom and Dad, holding his Certificate of Family Membership

The Morrison Kids - Outside the Courthouse

Ever playful kids - (L to R) Jane, Joseph, and Helen.  Good thing they didn't do this inside the court room.