When do you celebrate forever day??

[Jannt86]

The day of your celebration hearing? The day you first met? The day they moved in? Or did you just chose the one that was most convenient time of year? And what do you tend to do? Thanks xx

We celebrate:

• Moving in Day. Low key, we give the girls certificates of their achievements in the past year (stopping at 18, can't go on forever)
• Court Day. This is in summer holidays, when younger we tried to have a family day out, one year we went to Harry Potter World. Sometimes we are away and go out for a special meal.

We mark the first day we met, he called it Daddy day this year as it celebrates the day I became his Dad. Apparently the best thing about it was getting presents 😂

We do it on the day they moved in and have the same day out that we had during introductions.

The actual court date is a couple of days before our youngest birthday and our celebration hearing with the judge was really hard for our older child.

Using the moving in day and having the day out is great fun but also gives us all a chance to reflect on how everything has changed in the past couple of years.

We hadn't really planned which we would do, but this felt like the best fit for us.

Intro/moving in day - or a Saturday near there. All quite low key and flexible. We go to the same place every year.

We marked the anniversary of the day he moved in. Because we met him one day and our daughter met him the next day.

After a couple of years he seemed stressed at celebrating the day so we dropped it. Last year it was 5 years so we gave him the option and he chose a meal.out at his favourite restaurant.

I'm not sure if we will celebrate 6 years.

In a way it feels that he is just part of the family. As we havee a birth dd too it kind of feels that to celebrate something with him and not her isn't right. If both were adopted or he were an only we might celebrate it.

We were led by him and certainly he didn't want to for a couple of years.

Do what feels right for you.

Date AO granted. The move to us was hard, so not a date I felt was right to celebrate exactly, but the "now we're legal" date is at a totally different time of year with no other associations. (We didn't ever go to a celebration hearing - we do something that fits us instead, a day at the seaside, or a walk in the woods, then treat food at home.)

Our DC asked if our wedding anniversary could be our “Family Birthday” so that’s what we’ve done. I think moving in was hard for everyone, and they weren't really aware of the court day (in Scotland so no “celebration hearing”, but our silver wedding was the year after they moved in and we’ve kept that date for us as a family.

We don’t actually celebrate it formally. However, this year we did send a card to the social workers that were involved in our case to thank them for all they have done.

We celebrate the anniversary of the date we went to court and the AO was granted

We don’t celebrate it as such, but tend to mention it and remind our son how special he is. I think it depends on the child and what they understand