Thursday, January 01, 2009

Referral Day Details

I've finally settled down enough to post some more details of our referral day. I've been wanting to do this since Monday so I don't lose the details.



I slept in on Monday. I had had a rough night sleeping and finally settled down about the time Geoff got up! So about 10:00 I rolled over and the phone rang. It was Geoff calling to tell me that he was coming home. Apparently there had been an underground fire in downtown Savannah and it caused the power to go out.

So after two hours of no power they decided to send everyone home for the day. We hung up the phone and then Geoff called right back. This time he told me that he had been to the RQ site and that the referral rumor was up to a R4 rating. (Which means it was a pretty reliable rumor!) I jumped out of bed and headed for the computer! When I pulled up my email one of my friends had already gotten her call!!! I was ecstatic! Of course then I began the whole freaking out part about whether we would get a call since our agency was closed until Jan. 5th!

Geoff made it home. I took a shower while he guarded the phone. After a little while Geoff fixed himself some leftovers from Christmas dinner. At this point, Geoff had been home about an hour and a half. I was giving up on getting a call and decided to warm up some turkey. I took one mouthful and the phone rang! It was Mei! I was like a deer in headlights! Trying to figure out if I should swallow the turkey or just spit it out! LOL!

We each grabbed a phone, turned on the video camera and began to talk with Mei. I had to give the pen to Geoff because I couldn't write anything correctly! I even misspelled Lexi's Chinese name and she was spelling it letter by letter! We talked for about a half hour and got all the wonderful details. I, of course, cried the whole time! Once we hung up, we just hugged each other in a pure state of joy! I called my Mom and started telling her that we had a daughter and during this time, we got the email of her picture. I opened it and we just instantly fell in love with her precious face! Mom was beside herself wanting to see pictures. She kept saying she wished dad would get back from town and then finally she gave up and came without him! The funny thing is that she had surgery on her back for a herniated disk the week before Christmas and had yet to drive. She came on anyhow! She wanted to see Lexi so bad! During this time, Geoff was calling his Mom too!

The photos of Lexi came on one document. I had to crop each one to email them to my family. I swear this took forever! I don't know what I was doing but I kept losing the original scan and then would have to re-down load it all over again. I do this kind of stuff on the computer all the time but for some reason, I couldn't get it right! I was nuts! We spent the day on the phone calling family and close friends! It was crazy! The afternoon just disappeared! I had Geoff upload our pictures to CVS and order prints and later on he went to get them.

Then after a whirl of an afternoon, we met my Mom, Dad, brother, my sister Carolyn, my niece Jenna and her son John-Michael, Sara, Chris and the boys, along with Chris' Aunt Jackie and Uncle Ray (who were visiting from Maryland) at the China Buffet. We've been going there for years and talking to the owners wife about adopting from China. I went in and immediately started telling her about Lexi and showed her the pictures. She was so excited for us! All the waitresses came to see and they were so excited as well. We put pictures of Lexi in little frames and gave them to everyone at the table. It was such a nice family celebration! One we've dreamed of for so long! As soon as we can after returning from China, we will be taking Lexi there to meet everyone.

Once we got back home, we talked to MORE people on the phone and stared at her picture a lot! I had to post to my Yahoo groups and share with our Internet family. We finally made it to bed about mid-night that night. I was amazed that I could even sleep. We went to bed that night with Lexi on the nightstand by the bed. Now when we get up, she's the first thing we see and there isn't a better way to start a day!


2 comments:

Yvonne said...

Your story gives me chills! So excited for you!

Wanda, Geoff and Lexi said...

Talk about devine intervention! Any other day and Geoff would have been at work!