We had a family party at our house with cake and ice cream. People brought gifts like a baby shower. We made a necklace for our daughter with her name and adoption date on it so she would know how special that day was for us.

We had an open house after finalization. We had cake and snacks and just enjoyed the day. We got him a special adoption shirt from adoptionbug.com. One thing we wanted to do but ran out of time for was one of those photo frames that have the signature mats. That way people can write a message to your child that they can have forever!

We just had a big party with food and cake. We had family and close friends there. Took lots of photos to add to his special photo album. We even invited my son's social workers. it was nice!

Our family and friends held an adoption shower for us when we adopted our first two children at ages 8 & 9. The shower was a few weeks after the kids were placed with us permanently. It was great because we did not even own a coloring book at the time. The gifts included board games, school/art supplies, outfits, sleeping bags, homemade bed quilts, family photo gift certificate....all so helpful to get our house set up to be useful for the kids. On our finalization day we all dressed up very fancy and after court went to an expensive restaurant and gave the kids gold id bracelets with their new initials on it. Every year since (my kids are now 25 & 24) we celebrate the finalization day by giving cards or gifts to them...we call it their "Gotcha Day". We have followed the same tradition with our son who we adopted several years later.

@Andrasue: LOVE IT! Gotcha Day! So cool!

AWW! These are amazing ideas. We are going to be so happy when our adoption to our 3 beautiful children goes through (we have a while still) but we can't wait to have a big huge party with our family and friends. It is awesome that so many people have adoptive children that they love and treat as their own. We love our children so very much and couldn't imagine life without them.