One Year Ago Today...

...started out like a regular day. It was a Monday morning. I'm sure I was running into work right at 8:00. I was the Deputy Court Clerk for the City of *****. My favorite thing on Monday mornings was to see what happened on the weekend (as far as tickets go)! I was working on the weekend tickets when the phone rang at 9:00. I answered it and recognized Gayle's voice from Dillon.
This is somewhat how our conversation went:

Gayle: Jamie - when can ya'll come in?

Jamie: I'm sure we can sometime today.

Gayle: Well, we have a baby for you.

Jamie: (with huge butterflies in stomach and heart beating a million times a minute) Yea!

Gayle: Call Daniel and call me back.

I called Daniel and he said that he would come pick me up. So I called to let Gayle know that we would be leaving ***** in about 30 minutes and should be there by 11:00. I still hadn't even asked her if we had a boy or a girl or anything about my precious baby! Daniel came to pick me up and we were off to Tulsa. I called my Dad, my Mom, my sister, my Granny & Pa, my Grandma, Aunt DeAnn. My other aunts and uncles were at work. Then I called Gayle to tell her we were on our way and asked if we had a boy or a girl. She said a boy. We were really excited! We had waited so long and now we were, in a way, "having" a child.

We got to the Dillon offices and Jynger and Gayle took us in a room. Gayle was carrying a little pink folder. Deniese came in and visited for a minute. They told us that our referral was from the Ninh Thuan orphanage and told us a little bit about it. Gayle asked if we would rather see the picture or paperwork first. Daniel quickly said the picture. (I was so excited I could hardly talk.) They handed us a picture of a beautiful baby boy with big brown eyes. It was like love at first sight. I was looking into the eyes of my son. We looked over his other paperwork. Gayle handed us the acceptance papers. She said we could take them home and mail them back to her. Daniel and I looked at each other and said that we wanted to go ahead and accept the referral. We signed papers saying that this beautiful baby boy was our son!

We left Dillon and called my dad to tell him to meet us at mom's school. We met mom & dad there. My mom looked at Luke's picture and started crying. My dad looked at his picture and got this goofy grin on his face. We went by Daniel's parents and showed off our boy there.

It was back to work then. As soon as we got off work we ran to Wal-Mart to make a million copies of the picture of our guy!

This is a day that I will never forget. I became a mom with a baby half way around the world. Thank You, Lord, for our precious gift from You!

Here are some pictures of our little guy now. He is such a blessing! We have so much fun together. He is all into shaking his head for yes and no. When we are looking at each other talking, I'll say Mommy loves you. He'll shake his head yes. Then I'll say, Do you know Mommy loves you? He'll shake his head yes. Then I'll say, You are Mommy's sweet boy. He says yes. Then I ask him, Do you love Mommy? He says yes. I LOVE it!!

PRAISE ITEM - WE HAVE A CONTRACT ON OUR HOUSE IN *****!!! WE SHOULD CLOSE BY THE LAST WEEK OF APRIL. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR YOUR PRAYERS!