Sixteen Austin-area families stood before judges this week and made it official: 22 children now have permanent homes. Among them was Lauren Tavey, who walked into the Travis County Civil and Family Courts Facility on Thursday already raising six children and walked out a single mother of 10, having adopted four more kids named Amoralynn, Declin, Zaylynn and Zeplin.
The mass finalization happened at Celebrate Austin Adoption Day, an annual event that this year marked its 25th anniversary, according to the Austin American-Statesman. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services hosted the event alongside local courts and nonprofits as part of National Adoption Month, timing the celebration to call attention to children still waiting for families across the state.
Tavey's path to a house full of kids started long before Thursday. She adopted her daughter Lexalynn in 2011 at age 20, then added Addylynn and Jaylin in 2018. She reopened her home to foster care in 2019, and in 2022 she adopted Raelynn, Jaycelin and their baby sister Tayzlynn, after Raelynn and Jaycelin had first entered her home as what was meant to be a short-term placement. Four cousins needing a short-term placement arrived in 2024, and this week those four — Amoralynn, Declin, Zaylynn and Zeplin — became hers for good.
A Judge Who Presided Over Her Own Milestone Adoption
Tavey's adoption was presided over by Judge Aurora Martinez Jones, who holds the bench on the 126th District Court in Travis County and serves as a civil, family and juvenile court judge, according to a profile from the Texas Children's Commission. In the small-world fashion that defines Austin's child welfare circles, Martinez Jones has presided over other families' milestone adoptions before, including a grandmother's 2020 adoption of her three grandsons, as reported by The Imprint. That outlet also reported that when she presides over an adoption, Martinez Jones lets the kids bang the gavel themselves.
Tavey holds a doctorate in special education from the University of Texas at Austin, with a research focus on autism and developmental disabilities, the Statesman's reporting notes. She has said she plans to mark the adoptions with a family trip to see The Nutcracker ballet.
'Two Weeks Turned Into a Lifetime'
Not every family at Thursday's ceremony had a decade-long history with their new child. Chaynel Lane got a call in April 2024 asking if she could bring a boy named Kingston Hill into her home. Kingston, who is six and is the half-sibling of Lane's other four children, was formally adopted by Lane this week. Lane described what began as a two-week placement as having turned into, in her words, a lifetime.
Also finalized Thursday was the adoption of siblings Aiden, Hakeem and Aaliyah by Leodies Lewis and Tracy Jones. Lewis is the children's grandmother, and the adoption made the three kids Tracy Jones' first children, since Jones has no biological children of her own. Jessica Mangrum finalized that adoption, per the same Statesman account. Patricia Rocha, an adoption supervisor with DFPS Child Protective Services, was also named in connection with the day's proceedings.
The Numbers Behind the Celebration
The scale of need behind Thursday's celebration is significant. According to Texas DFPS figures cited in the Statesman's report, the state made 2,942 adoptions official over the preceding year, including 46 in Travis County, while 3,805 children statewide were still up for adoption during that same period — a different measure that the newspaper's reporting does not directly reconcile with the finalized-adoption count. A separate report from KVUE, dated November 2024, had put the prior year's Travis County adoption total at 136 with 2,224 children still waiting statewide — figures drawn from an earlier period and not a direct comparison to this year's numbers.
Texas's own open-data portal tracks these figures differently, counting children who exit DFPS custody to adoption during each fiscal year, according to the Texas Open Data Portal. The state's child protective services agency has said its published statistics contain no personal information and are summarized only to the state, region and county level, per the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
Austin Adoption Day's footprint has shifted from year to year. The Austin Bar Association has said it cosponsored a 22nd annual edition of the event at which 10 families adopted children, though the group's own account does not specify what year that ceremony took place. Tavey's family has a history with crisis-driven caregiving that predates her own adoptions: a 2006 Houston Chronicle report described her mother, Rhonda Tavey, and a then-16-year-old Lauren taking in five children displaced by Hurricane Katrina, helping care for one of the evacuee kids in the aftermath of the storm.
