Gotcha day!

Today was amazing! This precious boy was just as amazing as I had dreamed he would be!

Sam and I both woke up early and had to wait several LONG hours until 9:30 so we could leave to meet Eli. We had all our gifts packed and Eli's backpack full of goodies ready to go. We took a short bus ride to the registration office and were told that each child would show up at a different time depending on which orphanage they were coming from. Our little guy was already there waiting for us. It really caught me off guard as I was expecting to have to wait for him and we were the first ones to get our child. The tears started flowing from me just as soon as a saw his little face. Another amazing mom in our group was able to video record the whole "gotcha time" for us.  He was really scared at first and wouldn't look at us and we just held him and talked to him for a while before he started to warm up to us. He really liked the blue lollipop we gave him shortly after we met and I think that helped him think we were okay. After about 20 or 30 minutes we started to see some smiles from him and the rest of the day went uphill from there!

On our way to get Eli!

This kiddo was so thirsty!  He drank and drank and drank water!

He was quite the comedian. We got some laughs and smiles from him pretty quickly!

We got back all the care package items we had sent such a long time ago and his orphanage made us a nice photo album from his time there. This was so special for us to be able to have this!

He is just absolutely amazing. Adoption is amazing. This morning he didn't have a family and now he has one forever!