One Family's Story
June 2002

I thought I would share our experience in adopting John Carlos. It was a dark and stormy night…when we finally received the call that we were waiting almost two years for. Our birth mother was going to deliver her baby the following Monday and wanted us there for the delivery. We took deep breaths, finished packing our bags that had been ready for two weeks, boarded the plane to Austin and were in Texas in time for the delivery. We both were present when our wonderful birth mother gave birth to the most beautiful baby we had ever seen, our John Carlos. We were able to meet his birth grandmother and other relatives, and we all agreed that we were doing this out of great love for John Carlos. We took our beautiful baby to our temporary home, the Holiday Inn Express, when he was released from the hospital, to wait for clearance to take him home. The people of Texas opened their hearts to us. Everyone we met could not have been nicer and more supportive. We wanted to show John Carlos some of Texas while we were here, so we put him in his carseat (where he would promptly fall asleep) and drove around in our rented minivan to different parts of Texas. We showed him the state capitol in Austin, the Texas Ranger and Dr. Pepper Museums in Waco (from the outside, of course), and the Alamo and Riverwalk in San Antonio. When it was time for the flight home, we purchased a seat on the plane for him, to insure that we could place him in the carseat on the airplane. When we were ready to board, the airline representatives had his and our names on a list to be searched! We soon realized that because we bought a one-way ticked for John Carlos two days before the flight and he was boarding with no luggage, that the airline thought he could be a terrorist! So Baby John Carlos was searched on his first flight! The rest of the trip was happily uneventful, and we are now home almost a month enjoying our new addition.

John and Suzanne