This Month Is Such A Special One...

It's Birthday Time For YOU!!

Today Ruthie is 10

Double Digits!

She was off to school and I was off to prepare. 

All her gifts...

Art supplies

Art drawers

Legos

And...

A skateboard!

We went to dinner at Burrito Grande and she got to wear the birthday sombrero.

 

******

10 years ago today, a mom had a baby girl. You.  She knew she couldn't give you all you would need.  She placed you in front of the Bo Ai Hospital in FengCheng China.  The placement spoke volumes to the love she had for you.  You were found and taken to the orphanage around the corner.  You were weighed, measured and named.  Feng Li Qiu.  Beautiful Autumn Thunderclap.  The Beautiful and Autumn are a given.  Literally.  But Thunderclap?  You must have had some lungs or a striking personality to get a name like that.

 

When I got the translation of your name, I KNEW you were mine. My Beautiful Autumn Thunderclap.  I knew you'd go nicely with my Handsome Spring Thunderclaps, Isaac and Sam.

 

On February 16, 2005 I finally held you in my arms.  I cried tears of joy as you cried tears of fear and unknown.  We spent the next week and a half holding you in our arms.  Saying Mama and Baba while pointing to us.  Saying Qiu Qiu (ChooChoo) and Ruthie while pointing to you in the mirror.  You listened to her brothers' voices on the phone each  morning, loving the sound but unsure of what it was.

 

When we finally got you home, we went to pick up your big brothers.  You kept looking at your boys and then looking at me as if to say, "Are they mine? Really mine?".  You called them "my boys" for a couple of years. 

 

I always say, and truly believe, that I couldn't have made you more "mine" than if I'd made you myself. Heavenly Father was watching over each of us during this process of bringing our family together.

 

Ruthann LiQiu, we love you, and are so so so happy you belong to us.  Eternally.

We are also so so so very grateful to your birth mom and her great sacrifice to give you an opportunity to live a life she couldn't give you.  She loved you so so so very much.  I can't wait to meet her and hug her and thank her for giving you life.

 

Happy Birthday sweet Autumn Thunderclap. 

Double Digits!!