It felt much like Christmas morning, although the Texas heat in mid-September certainly confirmed otherwise. The air conditioning blasted in Big Blue as we pulled into our driveway, our new family of 9 finally arriving home after 5 weeks in Colombia completing our adoption. Jeremy excitedly fumbled with the keys, finding the house key as he’d done countless times before, yet now they would unlock a completely different life.
The anticipation had been building during the entire car ride home. Nervous energy filled the van as excited chatter mixed with moments of quiet disbelief. After weeks of paperwork, emotional intensity, and short nights, we were somehow more awake than we'd ever been.
Welcome signs and décor had been thoughtfully placed by dear friends while we were gone—balloons tied to kitchen chairs, handwritten notes taped to the refrigerator, and we would later discover favorite snacks mysteriously stocked in our pantry and cold drinks waiting in the frig.
We opened the door to the house, and a whole new world of possibilities. The sound of feet on tiled floors filled rooms that had been silent for weeks as the kids ran from room to room with cheerful exclamations. Each child's personality emerged in how they claimed their space—one methodical and careful, another impulsive and joyful, someone else hesitant but hopeful. They opened drawers to find new clothes, pulled out toys and bikes and balls in the yard.
Despite the September heat promising that our actual Christmas was still months away, this moment held all the magic of any December morning—the wonder, the gifts, the sense that everything had changed overnight.
We had not yet entered public school, and the kids were not quite in high school yet, but this was Homecoming. No mum exchanges or homecoming proposals yet. Just a new family, new beginning, where each of us would be presented the question daily, hanging unspoken in the air over breakfast tables and during bedtime routines, whispered in quiet car rides and shouted in moments of joy: "Will you be mine?"
"Will you be my daughter, my son?" "Will you be my mom, my dad?" "Will you be my sister, my brother?"
Each answer would be "Yes.” Sometimes whispered tentatively, sometimes declared with confidence, sometimes offered wordlessly through a shared laugh or comfort during tears. But the Yes would take time to settle, evolving from daily uncertainty to assumed belonging. We would take time to build, to trust, to grow, learning each other's rhythms and creating traditions that would stick.
And that growth would not always be linear and lovely. Some of it would be hard fought—navigating language barriers, cultural adjustments, and simply the beautiful exhaustion of nine people learning to move as one family. There would be moments when the question felt too heavy, when vulnerability showed in everyone's eyes, when the Texas storms outside matched the ones we weathered within these walls.
But every small victory built our foundation stronger—every shared meal, every crisis weathered together, every morning we chose each other again. On this different Texas Homecoming, we were laying groundwork that could withstand whatever storms would come.
Every bit of it was worth it. Every single bit.
