Referral Celebration!!

The referral celebration has continued.  We received our referral paperwork in the mail on Friday - overnighted from AGCI in Oregon.  (I had to blur her picture on the cover to protect her identity.  We can't share her picture or name here on our blog.  Probably due to the massive number of people who read this blog.)  Anyway, how exciting it was to see our daughter's picture on the front of the booklet!!  Wow.  We're really doing this thing!

To continue the celebration, on Friday night, we all went out to the nicest restaurant in town - Kahill's - the kind of restaurant that kids don't normally go to and get looked at a lot.  Usually the look is smiles of people with a thought bubble that says, "that's cool that they brought their kids." 

So all seven of us went to Kahill's and told the kids to order whatever they wanted - normally that means chicken fingers and hamburgers.  To our delight, one of our kids ordered a steak and two others ordered meat from Japan.  In actuality, the meat from Japan was just a fancy hamburger, but it was beyond what they normally eat!

We had a reservation for seven.  But to our delight, they seated us at a table for eight.  So we placed Peaches' picture at the eighth setting and she joined us for our first dinner together.  What a special night.

It's interesting to see how each of the kids have responded to the referral news and having actual pictures of her.  They have all been extremely excited to say the least.  But Eddie Joe's response has been incredible.  The morning after we received our referral, he started going through all of his things and making a pile of what he was going to give to Peaches.  He laid out books, matchbox cars, snow boots, stuffed animals, etc, etc,...everything a child would need (from his perspective).  It was priceless.  The other cool thing about Eddie Joe's response is that whenever he looks at Peaches' picture, he starts to cry - an emotional response that's a combination of sadness for her and happiness for us and just a I-don't-really-know-how-to-handle-all-of-this type of response.  It's really touching. 

We have been blessed by really great kids.  Peaches will be overwhelmed with sibling love.  We can't wait to bring her into our lives.