On January 16, 2012 we received a call at about 8:00 PM from our agency. They let us know that they were emailing a file for us to review. OMG! I freaked out. My husband had just left that morning for a 3 week long trip (of course) and so I called him immediately and we opened the email "together" on the phone with each other.
I have to say that I was very guarded when I clicked the message in my mailbox that read File Locked (our last name) CHEN JIN LING. If this wasn't going to be our daughter, I didn't want to fall in love with her right away. But, there was a part of me that knew right away when I opened it. What a beautiful girl. Look at those eyes. Well, it was a bit of a shock that she was nearly 18 months at that time and we knew that we would be unable to travel until June at the earliest. I thought to myself and out loud, "She'll be nearly two by the time we can even get her." I was imagining a baby, not a toddler, but that changed quickly. Over the course of the next few days we discovered that she really was meant to be our daughter. Even Little Boy had a theory. I pulled up the picture on my phone and asked him, "Honey, do you know who this is?" To which he responded, "That's Effie.". I asked, "How do you know?" and he plainly stated, "Because she's wearing a red coat." And I just couldn't argue with that.Two short days later we sent our Letter of Intent to make Great Wall and China aware that we had decided to move forward and adopt Jin Ling. I could barely keep it together. I wanted to scream out in the middle of church, at the checkout line in Target, on this blog. I wanted everyone to see that sweet face and know that some day soon that sweet girl would be in our home and our lives. She would be our daughter. Thus begun the unbelievably difficult wait. 13 days until our Pre approval (January 29) and then a whopping 93 days until we got our Letter of Seeking Confirmation or LSC (May 1).
Now that we are in possession of our LSC we've been given the green light to post publicly the sweet face and name of our daughter Jin. I have a feeling that traffic will pick up here on the blog as we step into this next phase of our journey. (If not just from Grandma and Grandpa visits alone). Another great privilege that our LSC allows us is the authorization to send our daughter a care package. We are using Ann's services at redthreadchina.com She is so very sweet and attentive to detail. We ordered a care package a week or so ago and she emailed just last night in preparation for delivery asking us if we wanted her to deliver the cake now or in a month when it is her Birthday. To which we replied NOW and we'll send another for her Birthday next month. To which she responded today with this email:
Dear Kara :
Will do that for you ,I will take good care of your package tomorrow !
I will not suggest you to order cake for your daughter again ,since her birthday is so close now ,the orphanage staff will not be happy to deal cakes for the same child so often ,the staff will be tired of you on the cake part ,better mail something else to your child instead for her birthday ,love,Ann
This totally cracked me up. So, I guess we'll have to send a few dozen boxes of Mum Mums and Jelly so as not to upset the Nannies having them deal with 2 cakes for just one spoiled little girl. But, I'm telling you the truth, If I could make up that Hello Kitty cake, decorate it and bike it over there myself for $115.00 you better believe I would. But for now, I'm just going to cherish the fact that she'll get this one to celebrate having a family and when we bring her home I'll make her a cake a day for the first month. :)
I will post updates as often as I can to let you all know when each piece falls into place. For now, enjoy the pictures. Thanks for stopping by!
With love,
Effie's Mommy
