One Year Ago - August 12, 2008

August 13, 2009 UPDATE:
China is matching! A special friend of ours will be getting her Referral any day now. The feeling is indescribable and she has Waited so long for this day to come. Our hopes, thoughts and prayers are with you Catherine!!


Has it really been a year already?!?

To describe this day would be futile, but I am going to try. Rereading our posts a year ago, we didn't write a lot of details. Of course we were in a state of mind that had us both blubbering and babbling all day, well into the late night hours.

We knew we were driving to Orlando instead of taking the referral "call". We had saved three different versions of the "call" form, a sort of checklist to write down what you hear during the call. It helps later, as you realize you were so excited that you forgot your daughters name and province! I did take a copy with me so that I could still have the memory of writing it all down. In the end, I didn't complete it as we had most of the papers in front of us.... actually in our hands.

We dreamed about having a video of the call, now to be at our agency's office. We knew it would never top Karen's video of her driving in her car while video taping her hysterics of joy as she learns about her new little daughter Gwen. But we wanted it of us, the pretty calm, older than dirt couple, hearing all about our daughter's whereabouts and especially her date of birth. We were prepared for a three year old; should we dare hope for a baby?
If you have been through this you know all the weird thoughts that can pop into your head even though all along you knew you were going to be so excited as the daughter who was in your heart, was now yours! Our time had come, AA was on the way to completing our family.

My DH videoed us leaving the house, getting into the truck, leaving our neighborhood, getting the flat tire, talking to Cat while in route, etc..... We made it to the agency office with two cheesecakes in tow (I promised some sweet treat for the appointment, I actually thought it might help them decide to let us come to the office; but they seemed sincerely thrilled that they could do one of these referral "calls" in person). As it turned out, they had another couple doing the same thing that afternoon.
The agency staff was so nice, we were nervous from the excitement and also tired as we had barely slept the two nights previous.
We sat in a conference room, they kindly used our video camera to capture the surprised look (and the tears) as we first saw Nan Min Hua's photo.

I don't think we posted the video of that MOMENT. DH was going to edit it and add photos so we would have a memory to share with AA some day; show her our excitement and love for her long before we held her. I don't think the final video was ever edited..... Something about a second round of paper chasing so that we could get on a plane and spend 16 days in China took our full attention. And get this, from the referral day to getting on that plane..... only 30 days. Who, but our agency, could do something like that? We follow a lot of blogs, and many families who got their referral in July 2008 traveled after us. Many who got their referral in August didn't travel until November. We were back from China with our daughter on September 27th, 2008. Talk about slow down to a crawl, then move into warp speed so fast, we were going in so many directions, never catching our breath and certainly not catching up on our sleep!

So referral day went well, from posting AA's picture on the blog, to meeting with these friends, to driving to our daughter's house where the family waited to celebrate the great news. Our daughter and SIL, recorded a song to remember the day, so sweet, we will never forget "I Will". When we arrived home, we were so excited knowing that more information would be arriving the next day and the FedEx driver would be our hero.
Life just doesn't get any better, I know you all understand the flush of love for your children and the journey you took to reach them.
We look forward to celebrating many more of these joyous days with our March 2006 LID friends. And the countless others in blog world that shared and continue to share this incredible journey, each step along the way.