The significance of skiing...

Leah learned how to ski this weekend. Sure many 3 year olds and younger do it all of the time, so why so significant to us? Well as Andrew and I were riding up the chair lift alone this weekend we both reflected on how 3 years ago we would go skiing to distract ourselves from waiting for a referral and "enjoy" the alone time while we had it to do things like ski, 2 years ago we would go skiing to distract ourselves from waiting for guardianship and wondering when we would get to travel to India. Last year, we barely went skiing because we would not yet leave Leah overnight or hardly for a long afternoon as she had only been ours for less than a year. And now, here we are, this year taking our daughter to Sugarloaf and teaching her how to ski. We truly dreamed of this for years when we would see other adorable kids on the slopes and could only hope one day we would have a family to do that with ourselves.

Some people have big reflection moments on birthdays, or "gotcha days" or anniversaries of referrals. We have them on chairlifts.

The last piece of the significance did not occur to us until we were on our way home after the long weekend. Leah was born with bilateral club feet. When we accepted her referral we were not even sure she would be walking "normal" by age 3 let alone running, skipping and now skiing. Amazing.