Here's Our Story

On Monday, May 4 we had the surprise of our lives when, on our last day of vacation, we woke up to a telephone call from Tina with our adoption agency telling us there was a healthy, 7 year old girl who was going to be placed on the multiple agency waiting child list and were we interested in locking her file. I immediately went into stammer mode. "Ugh, ugh," was the only thing coming out of my mouth. I recovered enough to tell Tina we were in a hotel room, without a computer, leaving tomorrow to fly home, etc. I hung up the phone, told T about the call, and immediately we called back to tell Tina to lock the file. At that time we were told we had until 8 a.m. Wednesday, May 6 to file a Letter of Intent (LOI) with the adoption affairs office in China stating our desire to adopt the specific child, how we would take care of her special need (age), how we would educate her, etc.

We went to the front desk at the hotel and explained to Sasha, the desk clerk, that we needed to get on a computer to receive the information about the girl who might become our daughter. In real time, it was a lot more chaotic than that. The tears we had in our eyes and the urgency in our voices probably scared the beejeebers out of Sasha, but he maintained his composure and helped us out. We got behind the desk with him, and he printed the information that had been emailed to us.

First thing Tuesday morning we flew home. When we arrived at 2:30 p.m., I called our agency to let them know we were on the ground, and, at that time, we found out we did not have until 8 a.m. Wednesday morning to file our Letter of Intent. We had until 7 p.m. that night. The clock is running. . .To say the adrenaline was pumping is an understatement. We took the hotel shuttle back to where we'd parked our car for the week, and I got on the phone to the office of the doctor who was going to review the medical information we'd received. Since we had parked in a new location we got turned around pulling out of the parking lot and drove on the local streets for a while until we could find the correct highway on-ramp. The clock is running. . . We had more than an hour drive in work traffic ahead of us. Road construction snarls traffic necessitating a circuitous alternate route home. The clock is running . . .We were getting concerned because we still hadn't heard anything from the doctor, and it was almost 5 p.m. At 4:55 p.m. the doctor, who, in addition to running an international adoption clinic, has four children adopted from China, called and said . . . she looks healthy. "She's a big kid," he said. Good news.

While T drove I wrote the Letter of Intent, and we finally arrived home. I typed the LOI into email and we sent it off to our agency at 6:30 p.m., a half hour before the deadline. When we called to confirm that it had been received, Tina told us we had sent it to the office, but she was working from home that day. We resent it to her home and gave her a few minutes to receive it. When we called back to confirm, she said, "It's already in China."