One Year Ago Today...

we saw our Margaret Rose's beautiful smile for the first time. We weren't even looking to adopt again so soon and MC and I were talking about a little brother when the time did come. The weekend before, however, we went out to eat and to the zoo with our friends who had recently adopted a 4 year old. We were all so impressed with the fabulous Anna Lin! So on Thursday night while I was waiting for a file to transfer over to my video camera I checked my yahoo groups. I don't even remember joining the Heritage Adoption group but their homepage said they had a new list of waiting children and I just had to have a peek. And there she was - Ji Lan Tong from the Huazhou SWI and oh but she had the most gorgeous little face. I remember calling out to Lee, "Hey! How'd you like a 4 year old from Huazhou?" and being surprised that he actually came to the computer and looked. "Ask for her file, " he said and I did and got it that same night from the wonderful Peggy at Heritage. By Saturday night we'd decided to adopt her only to find out on Sunday that she had quite a few people interested in her and her file would have to go through the petition process. We almost didn't petition as Lee declared us "old and broke" but friends from our first travel group encouraged us to give it a try. We faxed our application and a letter of interest and were quite sure we'd not be chosen. We went to a Christmas party on the 20th and after dinner I felt my phone vibrate. I took Mary Clare outside with me and found out in the driveway of Nana Pearl's house that we were getting a new daughter. I scooped up Mary Clare ran in and whispered to Lee, "They chose us!" "For what?" he asked. "For Lan Tong!" We were glad that we were with so many of our loved ones and that they could share in that unbelievable moment of joy.