One Year Ago Today...

It was one year ago today - September 18th (also my beautiful neice's birthday!) - that we received these pictures of this sweet, sweet face!! It was right up there in "one of the happiest days" category!!




I remember looking into Ana's deep brown eyes and feeling just so very blessed! I was in the dentist chair when I received a call from our agency saying they had some new children available and she wanted to send me pictures over the email. Oh my gosh, I wanted to run out of that dental office right at that moment - but I didn't - I let them finish my cleaning. So as soon as I got home, I phoned our agency and told them they could start sending the pictures. I had no idea they were sending so many pictures - it took forever to receive them. Ana's pictures were the first ones we received and I phoned our agency and told them not to send me anymore - Ana is all we needed to see! I just knew that when we did finally receive a referral, that we would accept the first child we saw - and we did! She was so beautiful & so full of life - her smile made you melt - and it still does!
I thank God every day that she hasn't lost her happiness & her smile. I worried so much that we would get her home and she would become very sad & not want to be with us. But I really think she has bonded very well with all of us & that she truly feels like she belongs (and she most certainly does) in this family.
So many of you prayed for Ana for close to a year and we thank you so much for that!

First Day of Preschool

Monday was Ana's first day of preschool. She was so excited!! She has been waiting for it to be her turn to go to school - I think she has asked me pretty much every day why her brothers and sister get to go to school and she has to wait. So her day finally arrived!! I woke her a bit early as I know she doesn't like to move very fast in the morning. She woke up very happy, but still moved at the pace of a turtle. It took her 20 minutes just to eat a slice of toast, so needless to say the other slice of toast didn't get eaten as we just had to get going.
She went right in to her classroom & starting playing. Her teacher greeted her with a "good morning Anna" and Ana respectfully told her "I'm not Anna, my name is Ana." I'm afraid she is probably going to be repeating her name many times throughout her life - oh well. So we got her settled into an activity at the table and she gave me a big hug and a kiss and said "goodbye Mom, I'll see you later!" I left thinking, well that was certainly easy!
So when it was time to pick her up, she took one look at me and started to cry. I couldn't believe it! She kept saying "no Mom, I'm not ready to go yet". I told her we could come back tomorrow and that seemed to make the crying stop.
Her favorite things to do at preschool are painting (poor thing doesn't have much opportunity at home for those messy projects) & singing - she has the B-I-B-L-E down quite well already!