Eleven years ago today, our beautiful Alyssa became a part of our life. We traveled to the Detroit airport to meet her flight from Korea. I was so nervous but also very, very excited. Before this I had a little boy who was all boy and honestly, I didn’t know if I was ready to raise a girl LOL! How silly we can sometime be.

I saw her come through that door and all my fears vanished. She was a little out of it when we first held her. I think she was tired and very hot. The day was exceptionally warm for April and her foster mom had dressed her in several layers. She was good and didn’t cry until it came time to leave when I changed her and put on something cooler I had bought a day or two before. As soon as we put her in the car seat, she fell asleep, only to wake up an hour later SCREAMING. I think she was jet lagged and frightened. She was in a rear facing seat, so when she woke up, all she could see was the seat. Brian, 5 at the time, wanted to sit next to her and tried to soothe her, to no avail. Finally, Doug pulled off the highway and found a fast food parking lot. As soon as I took her out of the seat, she stopped crying and didn’t cry much from then on.

She has grown into a lovely young lady with a sweet, sensitive, caring soul. She is getting to be a pretty good piano player, loves to draw, is very bright, and right now, she’s busy curling the hair of her American Girl doll. Gotta love it! My stomach is rumbling because the house smells like bulgogi, which is on the menu tonight along with Korean won ton. Dessert? Apple pie, per her request. Yes, we are a multi-cultural family 🙂

I thank God every day for the precious gift he gave us in our daughter.

Here is a picture taken of her after we got to the hotel where we stayed with her for the first few days to have a little private time to bond with her. She had calmed and was more alert by now. Sorry, don’t know how to change the orientation of this photo. You’ll have to look sideways to see it!