Our Wonderful "Welcome Home"!!

We keep getting requests for more blog posts and more pictures and updates on how our sweet Olivia is doing. We admit that we are totally behind on blogging! In fact we still have China pictures and videos we want to post, but if YOU had this little sweetheart to play with would YOU want to blog? :)


To answer your questions, Olivia is doing amazingly. When we think of how significantly her life has changed in the last three weeks we can't believe how well she has adjusted. She has a big personality in a little 17 lb. body! She is over her ear infection and doing great. She is a peanut in size 6 month clothing!! We hardly had anything that small so most of her clothes are a bit big on her. I hit the thrift stores so she has a few things that fit now! :)

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Charlotte, whose dad took many of these great airport pictures, and Isaac and Ava (my great-nephew and niece) had fun playing while they waited for us to get there (special thank you to Val and Kirk for your photos, too!)
So sweet....watching for us to come down the escalator. It is this sight that made me choke up - there were even more kids lined up at the glass...
Here we come!
We completely blocked the area where people read which baggage claim is theirs! :) Our god-daughter, Kiah, with her sign


My precious Mama, meeting Olivia. With our friend's photos, we got it from both angles!
Words can't express my joy that my mom was here for this moment! What a miracle and a blessing!

We flew home on Lee's 40th birthday

My niece, Jenny, brought birthday cake!

Jenny, meeting Miss O

Our friend Sirene gave us beautiful flowers

And a balloon from the Emanoffs
Grandma Marsha holding Miss O for the first time!

Grandpa Wilson holding Miss O. They have become good pals!

Now this one tops everything...Our dear friends, the Brennans, are in transition - currently staying with relatives in Indiana. Fred was a meteoroloist for NWA which is now owned by Delta, and they just sold their home in Bloomington, soon to be relocated to Atlanta. They ALL flew in on standby just to be there for our arrival. They have been great mentors to us and we love the entire family. We miss them so much already and are still trying to get our brains around the fact that we can't just pop in for pizza and lay around on the floor playing games, telling stories and end up laugh-laugh-laughing. LOVE YOU, BRENNANS! Dang Delta!!! Stink!

Miss Sandy got to hold Miss O since she flew all the way from Indiana!!
Miss Tracy got to hold Miss O because she drove all the way from Eagan.... :) She was threatening to babysit in a week or something crazy like that! :D
Isaac and Olivia meeting for the first time...

Corene got a smile from Olivia

We LOVE our baby! We can't believe it, even now, that she is home. She exceeds our wildest imaginations for everything. She is a great eater, sleeps through the night, has a fun personality, and seems to be super-dee-duper-smart. We can't believe how we are blessed. Our friend Jenna said it better than I could (for you grandparents, click on "Jenna" :) )

First time in the carseat. She fussed for a minute and then stopped. Probably because she was looking at me and listening to me cough all the way home!

Thank you for all the cards, emails, facebook notes, gifts, calls, visits, and all the love, prayers and support for this long journey to Olivia. She has been prayed over and longed for - two years before she was even born. The painful wait for Olivia is what brought us to our Patricia and then Philippe. I will say again that having Patricia and Philippe in our hearts helped us get through the last year to O and O will help us through the last year to them. God knows what he is doing as he knits the tapestry of our family together. We have learned to be content with each day, each stage of waiting for our family, even while watching the families of those around us grow. While we look up at the tapestry from the underside, all we can see is the knots and strings going every which way. We can't see the picture!! What is it? What does it look like? We know that God's plan is better than anything we could have come up with and that the complete picture is very clear to Him.