Birthday Girl!!

Last year, we sent Ava a birthday cake and gift.  My heart ached when we got the pictures of her on her birthday.  Her little lips were chapped and she was serving the cake to her friends.  I wanted to put chapstick on those lips and cut her cake for her.  I wanted to so badly for her to be HOME.

What a difference a year makes!!  Six months of love and family.  It is such a blessing to watch Ava become just what God intended...a cherished daughter, His and ours!!

 Happy Birthday, sweet Ava!!!

Three Years

November 28, 2011...three years ago, the four of us sat in a hotel lobby in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia anxiously watching for our first glimpse of our little Lily.

The little girl that we had loved since that first video we saw in March was finally ours!!

If you've never read about Lily's Gotcha Day, CLICK HERE . 

God's plan for our family always included Lily.  Three years of loving her have been an absolute joy. Lily has taught us to savor every minute of life and take nothing for granted.  God used this tiny girl and her weak little muscles to change our lives in the most extraordinary ways.  Three years of learning to live with a progressive muscle disease,contractures, wheelchairs, surgeries and tears...three years of love, laughter, faith, hope, joy, and peace.  The only thing that I would change would be finding her sooner and loving her longer.  

Happy Gotcha Day, to the strongest little girl I will ever know...we are so glad that you are ours!!

Three years on November 28, 2011, as Lily joined our family, another sweet little girl turned 7 years old in an orphanage in Ningbo, China.  Three years ago, we had no idea that God would send us back to China to bring our Ava HOME.  Tomorrow, Ava will turn 10 years old and will have her first birthday celebration.  We'll spend the day celebrating our littles and praising God for making them ours.