It's A Girl!

"Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!"
2 Corinthians 9:15

It is with great joy and excitement that I announce the referral of our newest little sister/daughter,
Katherine MeiLing.
She was born on March 6, 2007 (15 months) and is from the Jiangxi province.
We are absolutely in love and are already very anxious to get her. We are hoping to travel this fall!

On Tuesday night, I had this gut feeling that our referral was coming soon. Wednesday afternoon, my mom informed me that a new shared list came out. Although we weren't expecting anything, the thought of having a baby in this batch did cross my mind. (This same thing happened when we received AnnaClaire's referral in 2006.) Fast forward to Thursday. Mom, AnnaClaire, and I left around 11 to do a few errands. We were doing some father's day shopping in Hallmark when Mom's phone rang (at 11:57!). She pulled it out and right before she opened it, I noticed a 703 area code. This was it. I tried listening and had to contain myself from jumping up and down, while AnnaClaire was getting into things, Mom was in complete disbelief and trying to find out more... I called Dad and soon Mom was on with the coordinator, I was on with Dad. Of all days, we had no phone or internet at home (we had a huge storm on Wednesday night) so we could not even run home to get the email. We finally decided to drive down to Dad's office to see the pictures and info. I was going CRAZY. (This whole week has been crazy. Getting home from New Jersey, broken water heater, Drew came home from China, and now a referral!) I don't know how people wait days to see pictures. 45 minutes was too much for me! Now, this was a SHARED referral and anyone could be looking at it. Sooooooooo. We had to act very quickly. We took a step of faith and locked the file. We felt like she was our Katherine from just hearing about her. None of us had seen her pictures yet. Mom, AC, and I ran out of Hallmark and drove quickly to Dad's office (about 30 minutes away.) The whole way there, Dad (who had already taken a sneak peek!) tried explaining her to us. He said that she was ADORABLE with chubby cheeks and "a haircut that looks like a weed eater went through it." He then ended with, "She's ours." Right when we got to Dad's office, we ran up and her pictures were waiting on his screen. She is beautiful and I am so in love. We all sat there admiring her while we called the boys and told them all about her. Anyway, we only had 48 hours with her file. In that time, we had to bring the file to the ped and have her look over it and we had to write our entire LOI. We stopped for a quick lunch at Chipotle and ran by the ped on the way home. She wasn't in, but thankfully we are friends with both her and her sweet nurse. We were able to give the nurse Kate's file to then pass onto the ped. Oh it helps to have connections! (Thankfully they were in town, as our ped was not in town when we got AnnaClaire's referral, so we had to go with another doctor and it was 2 weeks before we could get an appt and send our LOI!) We went back home and emailed the ped to let her know that the nurse had the file and blah blah blah. I had a summer league swim meet that night, while Mom and Dad went on and wrote the whole LOI so that everything would be ready for when we heard back from the ped. I got home a little after 10 and she had just emailed back saying Kate's file looked great and to go on with the adoption! We submitted all our paperwork to our agency this and they sent it to the CCAA!! We actually just got the confirmation that our EA (electronic acceptance, which I guess is the same as LOI) just a few minutes ago! So now the waits for PA, LOA, and TA begin. We are hoping to travel in September or October of this year! I don't know how I'm going to wait. I think she is the cutest thing ever and I just want to wrap my arms around her! We are coming sweet girl, just as soon as we can!

GOD IS SO GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also~ after receiving her referral, we are not sure if we will call her Katie or Kate. What do you think? (Oh and she and AnnaClaire are 16 months apart!)

Lastly, our agency told us to use caution in posting our referral. You might have noticed that I left out a few details about our sweet girl, that is why. Once we get LOA, I will be able to post those things. I did want to ask that you do not share her pictures until we get LOA. Thanks so much!

I'm a big sister again!! :)