This week, last year...

We were on our second visit trip. My hubby and I had left on a Thursday (Feb 1st). Then my mom flew down by herself to meet her grandbabies and to spend the rest of the week with me so Gary could come back to work. As luck would have it, she was on the same plane as my future daughter-in-law's parents, (http://www.ggaggle.blogspot.com/) who were coming to pick up Mira!! We surprised them all at the airport (even though we weren't supposed to leave the hotel. eeks!). I think it was one of the highlights of my mom's life and one of mine, for sure!

In December, the boys had to switch Foster Families during our first first trip. We didn't learn of this until we had already said goodbye to the first foster family. Gary was still in the lobby when the lawyer (who we didn't even know had been there because she never introduced herself) told Gary a new family would pick the boys' up on Friday. I was heartbroken! How traumatic for my babies, they had just been taken away from the only family they had known for 8 months, to be left with us, (loving, but) total strangers and then they were going to be handed off to another set of strangers. Plus, we had not really spent any time with the foster family (it was LATE at night, December travel had delayed us by hours!) and we had invited them to lunch on Friday. We had Christmas presents for them, plus lots of questions about the babies' life. And they were never allowed to say good-bye to their foster children. It was just all very, very heartbreaking.

However, as proof that we don't always understand what God is up to...just eight "short" weeks later on our second visit trip, we had completely different children! On our first trip, it was very clear that they had not been played with much (we sat them on the floor with toys and they just sort of looked at them and us) and I would say, developmentally, they were more like 4 or 5 months old (which truth be told, was fine for me then since I had missed so much babytime with them). Anyway, when we met the boys in Feb - they were thriving! The foster family had them in bouncy swings (in the doorway), and in walkers and there were several teenagers in and out of the house all the time doting on them constantly.

It was wonderful to see them so happy and so active. We'll never know the reason for the sudden change of foster families. We'll never know much about their first 8 months of life. But clearly God saw something better for them and we are grateful. We still e-mail the foster family and hope to see them again one day!

SuperBowl last year:

And Super Bowl this year:

Here's my mom, (a.k.a Nonnie), last year. Our makeshift play area in the hotel room: Austin showing an early interest in Mira!

Mira on her Embassy Day:

And Mira today - Happy One Year with your Forever Family, Beauitful!