Gottcha Day!

Today is Joi's "Gottcha Day". If you are unfamiliar with that term Gottcha Day points back to the day we added Joi to our family. Each of our daughters has a special day we set aside to remember the miracle of God adding them to our family. Since God chose to put our family together through adoption, we make a really big deal out of the day we first saw each of our daughters. We also celebrate birthdays and spiritual birthdays (the day they became a Christian).


Today was all about going Joi some choices to celebrate her special day. She got to pick her favorite restaurant (Rosies). Actually her first choice was McDonalds but after a little coaching she soon felt the need to some Tex-Mex. We got to play the game of "Life"...the longest board game in the history of board games...but it was fun!

Another fun thing about Gottcha Day is that we got to pull out Joi's Life Book. It's a book with lots of pics of what her life was like in Korea, info about her foster mother, and great pics of our cute little "hooten-tooten". Next time you see her make sure you call her by her nickname!

On Gottcha Day we all remember some of the "firsts" about one of our daughters. Here's what we remembered this year about Joi's first 24 hours with us:

• We traveled to Atlanta meet Joi for the first time at the Atlanta airport. Faith and Grace were given cameras and they went crazy. They were like preschool paparazzi's! Unfortunately most of their pictures were of the floor or someones thumb.
• Joi was almost a year old when we adopted her and she was severely jet lagged the first night with us. Amy and I took turns staying up and entertaining her. Her favorite game was banging on the hotel window and smiling. It kept her pretty occupied but we didn't get much sleep.
• Joi was a great snuggler from the very beginning. To this day she sits in my lap every evening I'm home. I'm secretly hoping she will keep this habit into her teens!
• Joi's first American food was an Arby's curly fry...it sure beat the squid chips she was gnawing on when we first met her.

Joi has really lived up to her name. She has brought incredable joy to our family. This has been a great year for her. We have recently celebrated her becoming a Christian and daddy is looking forward to baptizing her pretty soon!

Tonight the celebration continues. Her request was grilled hot dogs slathered in ketchup. Hopefully we can get her to the Korea House restraunt on her next Gottcha Day. I've got a hankering for some more of those squid chips.