Three little ladies.....

and their SIX China babies!

Over the weekend we did quite a bit of celebrating with our Maddox. Shhhh - she will turn two on Wednesday, TWO, and I, of course, just want her to stay ONE for a wee bit longer :) Donna and Ashley drove the, ahem, two hour drive over from Atlanta with their families to be with us! We were so excited to have them and could not wait for them to meet our peeps and for the girls to play and swim and just hang out. These two will always be special to our family! We are all woven together through our stories. Donna's family was the first family we followed in blog world to China to adopt their little girl with cleft lip and palate. This made a huge impact on our decision to switch to the special needs program back when the special needs program was not nearly as popular as it has become now. And Donna has a wealth of adoption knowledge that has led me through both of our adoptions. The neat part this time around is that Donna and I were on the same timeline - she found her baby girl a few weeks after we were matched with Maddox. We ALMOST traveled together but instead missed each other in the air - we were on our way home and she was on her way there! And Ashley, her family takes our family full circle. We met in line for fingerprinting in Atlanta - two strangers, same hearts for adoption. We had been matched with MK, they were applying to adopt a healthy baby girl from China. We got MK. They waited. They met MK. And continued to wait. I got Ashley in contact with Donna and not too long after, Ashley's family found their little Junie. When they accepted Junie's referral, we were in the process to adopt again from China via the special needs route. We were not 100% sure that cleft would be a need we would choose - our main concern being finances later for surgeries, COLLEGE, etc., and it will all come to a tip around the same time! I remember seeing Junie's sweet little face in her referral pic and knew that no matter the worries, we COULD do cleft and one month after they traveled for Junie, we got Maddox's referral!

Our friendships will last a lifetime and our girls' stories will be told that much longer! Love you guys!