Sometimes you end up on a different path....

Sometimes you end up on a different path than you planned and you end up just where you are supposed to be. Well, that is what happened to us. Our last bike trip ended early because of a call from our adoption agency that we had been picked by a young couple to parent their then unborn child. So as we wrote about, we returned to Denver and had several meetings with the birth parents and birth grandma and went
into full gear preparing to bring a newborn into our home. A few days before the baby was born, the birth parents decided to parent. For the moment our hearts were broken, but it all lead us down the road we now know we were meant to be on, that of parents of our amazing Lily. We knew nothing of Lily until a call we received the day she was born. Below is the e-mail I sent to friends and family on September 22, 2010 (two days after Lily was born).


Life is beautiful and generous.

This past Monday started as a usual day. I ate quinoa for breakfast while scanning the paper for articles related to immigration, kissed my Jimmy goodbye and headed to work. Jim ran, graded papers and went to teach. The day and our lives completely shifted gears in the late afternoon when I got a call from the adoption agency. A little girl had been born that morning and was waiting for us at
the Boulder Community Hospital . I was able to get Jim pulled from class, picked him up and we swung by home to pick up the car seat, baby clothes and over night stuff for us. We arrived at the Boulder hospital and met our amazing daughter just after 6 PM. We all spent the night together in a room in the hosptial and got to know each other. Yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon, we brought Liliana ("Lily") Hazel Flora-Walsh home.


We are so happy and feel so blessed by our little one!!

lots of love,
Gabriela and Jim

Well, Jim and I are about to embark on our 7th bike tour together. This one will be short- only four days- as we have our amazing Lily to come back to. We will be biking on the Allegheny Trail in western PA. It will be my first time away from Lily and we will miss her terribly, but are also looking forward to time on the seat of a bicyle together as a couple. And we have much anticipation for next year when we will bring Lily with us.

Lily will be staying with her grandparents in Cranberry, PA and Jim's dad will drop us off tomorrow in Oil City, PA where he was born. Our hearts will be split during these four day between the love of the road and longing for our Lily.