Then I saw her face...

Late in the day on December 1, 2006 a FedEx truck pulled up out front. Perhaps the most important package we ever received was finally here! We knew about Lian Bao Zhen, but had yet to see her.

I remember that my hands trembled with excitement as we opened the folder.


I remember an amazing peaceful feeling settling over me as we pulled out her pictures and gazed upon the face of our daughter. I remember falling in love...

(I also remember thinking that the name Ian and I had secretly called her for months was not the right name ~ funny that Kylie had not originally been on our list of names, but when we stumbled upon it we knew that it was her name!)

So today one year after we first saw her face we were up in the mountains to "choose and cut" Kylie's first Christmas tree. We selected a tree farm called Mountain Memories and set out looking for "the tree." At first I was almost overwhelmed ~ there were MANY more to select from than at the corner stand here in town ~ but then I realized that pretty much all of the trees were beautiful, so we couldn't go wrong. It really got fun when we started asking Kylie if she liked each tree we passed. She clearly had her opinions...

"Dis!" ~ the girl spoke, so this is our tree! In a matter of minutes Daddy cut the tree down...

...and we drug it back to the car!

I'll admit that I teased Ian for a while about his "romanticised memories" of going to get a tree with his parents each year, but I'm glad that he continued to insist that we make the drive out of the city! We're already putting our name in to rent the cabin in Ashe County the same weekend next year! This Christmas is going to be one of our merriest yet!

One other thing I remember from this day last year is thinking that I had already fallen completely in love with our daughter ~ now I realize that it wasn't complete then because somehow I still fall in love with her a little more each day!