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Shelley Osterloh ReportingThird District Court celebrated Adoption Day today, with a dozen families adopting children who have been in the state's custody because of abuse or neglect.
We don't often get to take our cameras inside the court room -- especially juvenile court. The proceedings there are usually grim, with kids in trouble. But the atmosphere today was quite different.
"When your rocky times come along, that they will always know that you unconditionally love them and accept them and that they will always be wanted and loved as your children. Can you give them that?"
"Yes."
One year old Robert and his 5-year-old sister Xihomara have been in this court before, when they were placed in foster care.
Their birth parents are unable to provide a safe home for them, and the foster parents who have cared for them for 8 months fell in love with them. With this official act, they have a new family.
There are more than 2,300 children in Utah who need foster care. Judge Sharron McCully hopes others will be moved to open their homes to children who deserve to be loved and have a safe home.
Judge Sharon McCully/ Third District Court: "I would really encourage people to really examine their hearts and their families and their homes and determine if they can offer their families to these children as permanent adoptive families."
Tiffany/ Adoptive Mother: "We just started out to be foster parents, and they were too perfect a fit not to adopt them."
Xihomara and her new sister have been practicing a new song.
Girls singing: "Have you ever seen a turkey go this way and that?"
For little Xihomara and her brother, Robert, it's a simple matter of love.
This year, about 300 children in foster care were adopted into permanent families. But as Judge McCully told me, it's also a happy occasion when a child's birth parents get their lives together and the children are returned to their families.
