Merry Christmas!

I hope that everyone had a great Christmas! Grace had so much fun with paper and boxes. She got tons of stuff from friends and family. I wondered how she would react to her gifts from Santa on Christmas morning. They were unwrapped, under the tree in the living room. She noticed them immediately, threw down her cup of milk and went from one thing to another. I will post Christmas pictures ASAP. I left my camera at my parent's house today.

I feel so blessed this year, celebrating Christmas at home with Grace. We will soon be celebrating our first anniversary as a family. December 28 is our "Family Day," the day when Grace officially became my daughter. My thoughts are consumed by meeting Grace, Vietnam, and the friends with us on the journey.

At almost this exact time last year I was meeting my daughter for the first time. Our visit to the orphanage was originally supposed to be in the morning, but was pushed back until after lunch. We visited the Hoi An orphanage (where we got to see Debbie meet baby Lily) as planned that morning so we had time to kill until we could go to the Que Son orphanage to meet Grace, Lucy and Khai. I really don't remember much about what we did during that time, I just remember checking my watch constantly. It seemed like 1:00 p.m. would never arrive.

When we finally got to the orphanage Kelly and Terri began shouting "there's Grace, there's Grace." Even though I know it was only a second, it felt like it took me forever to locate her with my own eyes. Suddenly there she was, one of the nannies was on the porch holding her. I immediately flung my camera to Terri and took off. It was like seeing a superstar whose picture was plastered all over my house. It was very surreal. This was the first time I saw her, she took my breath away.


I am so fortunate to have friends like Kelly and Justin. They are wonderful people and we all feel it is important for our girls to always stay in touch. We have been able to get together a couple of times this year and I hope that we can do it again very, very soon. I am dying to see Lucy. I am so thankful that I heard from the other two families during the holidays. I am going to do my best to keep track of these families. I want to see how all the babies grow and change. Here are the mommies and their angels in Hanoi.