Ainsley's Little Sister-Miss Sofie Lu: 3 months ago

Today is our wedding anniversary, 19 years, it is Miss Sofie Lu's 3rd birthday, her first birthday with us and it has been exactly 3 months since we first met that sweet, smiling, scared face in a civil affairs office in Hefei, China. WOW....what a day :)
It has been a while since I have blogged. We are still having issues with Sofie waking up in the middle of the night so I am a little tired and find it hard to find the time to sit down and write....laundry wins all the time!

I find myself thinking of Sofie's China mother a lot today. I wonder if she is thinking of her, how she is doing today, the day she gave birth to her daughter, the daughter whose bright smile she will never know. I think of the painful decision that she had to make to let her daughter go so the she would hopefully get the medical treatment that she needed. My heart aches for her today. I cannot imagine the pain and grief that a mother experiences leaving their sweet, precious baby in a public place for someone else to find and hopefully bring to a safe orphanage. It just breaks my heart. I am sure that she thinks of her daughter almost every day, but today must be a very difficult day.

I am very thankful today for so much. Thankful for my wonderful family whom I love dearly. My sweet husband, who is my best friend and my rock and my wonderful oldest sweet pea Ainsley who was just in Thunder Bay for 5 days visiting her cousins. She missed her sister so much that she had to call one morning just to talk to her. It was a priceless moment....so sweet. I am very thankful for Sofie getting through her surgery, she is totally back to normal again....eating up a storm! I am also so very thankful for all the twists and turns, ups and downs and disappointments that led us all to each other. So many things in our adoption process either changed or didn't work out. If one single thing had been different, we wouldn't have found Sofie. We were meant to find each other....all of us. She was born on our anniversary, two weeks before we had our very first meeting with the adoption agency. If we hadn't decided to start our journey in the Ethiopia program and then withdrawal from it, we never would have found each other. So many little things had to happen for the timing to be perfect. We were meant to be a family, all of us.

Today we will have a quiet celebration at home. My Mom, Dad and their friend are coming down for a week and they are bringing Ainsley back home. Yeahhhhhh!!!! I miss her so much. This is the first time that my Dad will meet Sofie. I am so excited to see them together. Saturday we are having a big Hello Kitty themed birthday party for Sofie. She has no idea what a birthday is or what it involves :) It should be a ton of fun!!

So I am sending out a huge HAPPY ANNIVERSARY WISH to Jim and a very big HAPPY BIRTHDAY WISH to Sofie. I cannot believe how far we have come in 3 short months. I feel so very blessed :)