Mae Day!

Today we celebrated Mae's adoption day! It was three years ago today that we met our beautiful girl and became a family. She has grown so much since that bitty girl we first held in our arms in Zhengzhou China, but she is the same trusting child that radaites with joy. We celebrated this day, our famiversary by letting Mae pick what she wanted the family to do... And she said she wanted to "go out to eat pizza". 

This is the first time the Lekbergs have gone out to eat since we we've been back from China; I guess pizza is a good place to start! 

It was a fun time and the babies even enjoyed a slice. 

Lately, I have thought a lot about the importance of making family traditions.  It's like everything that was fun before is now multiplied. I can't wait for Christmas Day and Easter egg hunts, family camping trips, movie nights and sharing root beer floats (when the kids get a little older). 

So for this day, I wanted something that we could continue every year and be memorable when they get older. We decided lighting a Chinese lantern was a perfect way to celebrate! 

Our lantern was ready, we let it go, and watched it float away. 

There's something about watching the lantern leave, it went up so far it looked like a star in the sky and then disappeared— we were actually awe-struck. 

We didn't prepare Mae very well, because she wanted the lantern back. We had to tell her it was gone and she was a little disappointed. I think she thought of it like a kite. 

The other tradition we plan to do every year on their adoption day is: we want to give the children 10 words describing them and how they enrich our family. It will be a special way to celebrate them. Don't you think it will be interesting to see what words will stay the same over the years and what new ones will be added as they grow and change?

It is our desire to celebrate our children  and the beauty of their story, because of who they are, not just because of their adoption, as momentous as it was. We never want our children to see themselves firstly as adopted.

While adoption is beautiful beyond words, and being an orphan who was adopted is a powerful part of their testimony of God's love, that's not what defines them. When our children think of who they are, we want them to see themselves as sons and daughters who were uniquely created and radically loved by their Heavenly Father and belong to this family.