Referral Day 1 Year!

 Every one remembers the day they saw their child's face for the very first time.  For birth parents, it's the day their child is born.  But for many adoptive parents, it's the day they first see a picture of their child.  I didn't know my daughter when this picture was taken, but I knew she was my daughter when I saw this picture!  I was at work when I received a call and email from our agency about a 1 year old girl with a missing left hand.  Could we look at her file and think about it?  I opened my email and immediately fell in love!  There was no concentrating on work after that.  It was a race against the clock to get our

paper work filed and get our unfinished house put together!  One year later and I still can feel it in my gut the way I felt when I first saw her picture on Friday June 25, 2010.   I feel so lucky to be this little girls Mom, and often wonder, "why me?"  We've been a family now for 6 months, 1 week, 5 days, and 7 hours and I still marvel at how this all happened!  When we're not in awe of every little thing she does, we are just enjoying every day together.  I've seen other adoptive families take a picture of their children with their referral picture every year as they get older and thought that would be a nice tradition for us too. For Cadie's first picture, we happened to be going to the beach, so I took a picture Friday night before we left home and one at the beach too! We can't wait to see the pictures in years to come.