One year, then and now

It has been one year since we first saw Mebira's picture. November 22, one year ago, was the day we received the referral of our beautiful girl. I remember the intense excitement of that day, and yet the extreme sadness when I received her background info and realized all that she had lost. I remember the first thing I said when I saw her picture - "Oh, she's so cute!"

I should have documented the exact happenings of that day...it's amazing how some details fade. I remember being at work all day, it was a Monday, and coming home and checking the messages. My heart jumped when I heard a message from our adoption agency, asking us to call them, but I didn't want to assume anything and be disappointed. I immediately called K from CAS, and she informed me that we had a little 4.25 year old girl! I couldn't believe it. I was shaking and in total shock.

I remember trying to call Arvid. He was having an important discussion in his office so he didn't answer his phone. I called his cell, then office phone, then cell, then office phone, repeat. FINALLY he answered and then I couldn't speak because I was crying too much! I finally go the word out and we were both so excited.

That evening, we took the girls to swimming lessons and my parents met us there. We had told them the good news and it was so fun to talk about it with them. Later that evening K from CAS came over and showed us the pictures and gave us all of the documentation that she was given. There's actually quite a bit of stuff that you get - details on history, medical and lab reports, intake reports with all of the various government signatures, birth and death certificates, you name it. We also received three precious pictures and I couldn't help but keep staring at them over and over again.

We decided not to tell the girls until our consult with the International Adoption doctor. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get that consult until Friday evening and it nearly killed me to wait that long. We had a good 1.5-2 hour phone conversation with her, gave our final consent and then came out to tell the girls. We had taken the pictures of Mebira and given each of the girls their own photo album with the pictures inside. We also gave them a nice card. After that we went to Montana's and celebrated!

And here we are, a year later. SO much has changed in that year. We've welcomed Mebira and said good-bye to Arvid's dad. We've gotten to know the beautiful girl from the picture and have grown to love her like she's always been here. We've had family dynamics change, but have started to adjust to the new normal.

Above all, we are so thankful to have this amazing family. What a blessing each and every person is to me!

Here is a picture from then:
And now: