While most people meet their child for the first time in a delivery room, some parents have to meet their child in the reception area of an administrative building. NOT ALWAYS HAPPY is a humorous and sharp chronicle about adopting and raising a son with Downs syndrome from the Maine foster care system. The author quickly learns that life is best lived by expecting the unplanned when she makes the decision to become a parent in her late forties. As her unconventional family moves along in this life, she and her husband are less aware they are raising an atypical child or an adopted child. They are raising their child and their family struggles with the same universal themes that any family goes through.