birthday girl

Seven years ago today, a 19-year-old young woman named QT gave birth about seven weeks early to a tiny 4 lb baby girl. I'm so thankful that she allowed this baby to grow inside of her for so many months. She named her Tekia Celine-Kitoko (Kitoko meaning "beautiful" in her native African language). Our journey with Tekia would not begin until three and a half months later, and it wouldn't "officially" begin until three and half years later when she became ours for good and was renamed Tekia Faith.

I just can't believe she's SEVEN!

Happy 7th Birthday to our favorite little priss pot :)
(and thank you to the four parents who made it possible!)

We are busy preparing for a big flip flop/swimming birthday party! In the above picture, Kia is wearing her birthday present from me...a new swim suit (Hawaiian-themed for our trip, of course) and cover-up.

PS. You may have noticed that this isn't an obnoxiously long post with an insane amount of pictures from the past 7 years...I decided to tone it down since I did such monster posts on the kids' adoption days. And speaking of toning it down, you may have also noticed that I completely skipped Shelby's and Jamal and Jamier's birthdays! I'm a bad sister. They fell in the middle of VBS, Kennedy, etc...needless to say, there was not much time for blogging. Shelby turned 30 on June 19th, and the boys turned 12 on June 23rd!