We have a referral!!!

Thursday night, (2 days ago) I was doing a spa night for the teen girls at church. Paul was out of town all week so I had the boys with me, and Gab as my lovely assistant.

Midway through my phone rang…I saw a 435 area code (Utah) and figured it was my sister, so I figured I’d call her when I was done. But then by the time we got out, it was after 8pm and I was in a hurry to get the kids home and to bed. When we did finally get home, I told everyone to get pajamas, and took that opportunity to check my email.

And there it was ….”CONGRATULATIONS!!” from our adoption agency! I clicked on it and it read something like, Congratulations, we’ve matched your family to a darling baby girl….

me: What? BABY?? I clicked on the attachment to see her info and photo…birthday read October, 2009! A baby!!! Almost 12 months old. And her name…a beautiful name…Darling photo…she was perfect! (due to Ethiopia’s request, I can’t/won’t post photo or name online until she’s legally ours…but I will tell you her middle name will be Grace, so we’ll go with that for now)

I hurried and called Paul and told him and he said, “Oh, man,  you have her photo there? I can’t see her until tomorrow!” So I had sympathy on the guy and forwarded the email to him. Nice of me, I thought 😀

We’re very, very excited and began telling everyone the next day.

But here’s the really funny thing….In January, Paul was out of town. That’s when we decided to adopt. Now, 9 months later, when he was out of town again, we got the referral! I had a feeling it might go down like that, and it was amazing how it worked out.

So the next step is to mail our acceptance paperwork in…then it gets sent to Ethiopia and they will set up a court date. We’ll travel to Ethiopia for the adoption itself and to meet Grace. Then we come home (and I post pics!!!) and wait until her new birth certificate and visa are ready for her to travel. When those are done, I travel to pick her up and bring her home!