First Anniversary of Juneau's Referral

January 23 marked exactly one year to the date that we saw little June-bug for the first time. It was a rather crazy time for our family in general. I was 6 months pregnant with Nova, and living by myself in Kentucky doing a Gyn Surgery rotation. Cris was in Hawaii, working hard on the final stages of his PhD. We had been through a rollercoaster of an adoption process, and the state of Vietnamese adoptions in general was undergoing a major transition. We were left wondering if we would ever be able to complete an adoption from Vietnam at all, when Ruthanne from our agency called that afternoon. I didn't recognize the agency's phone # at first, and almost didn't answer the phone because i was pretty wiped out after a long day. When i did answer, Ruthanne told me that Kristine was in Vietnam, and had held the baby girl that would soon be our Juneau. I called Cris immediately, and we talked all about our new daughter. It would be another long 6 months until we held her in our arms, but this was the start of our new (and rapidly expanding!) little family.

Juneau holding one of her referral pictures.

We celebrated by taking Juneau out to eat at Ba-Le, our favorite local Vietnamese Restaurant. She scarfed down some MahiMahi and Rice, along with some Chicken Pho, and then we headed over to Baskin Robbins. While in the parking lot at Baskin's she started a little heaving, and then vomited an amount that could rival a 30 year old man (we were actually able to confirm this hypothesis when Cris ended up puking his guts out the next day). Nova had been throwing up all night long the night before our Referral day celebration, so we weren't really surpised that Juneau had caught the same bug; although it did throw a bit of a wrench in the celebration.

Regardless of the stomach flu, we had a wonderful day with our sweet girl.

Juneau, it didn't take us long to discover what an amazing little girl you are. We are blessed beyond words to have been given the chance to be your Mom and Dad, and we will do everything we can to help you grow into the compassionate, loving, daring, and insightful girl that we know you will become. We love you more than we believed possible, and we have loved you since our first glimpse of you, January 23, 2008.