Referral Day

What a crazy few days it's been. Before the details of that crazy day are replaced with obsessing over travel dates, I wanted to capture some memories. Honestly if we had not videotaped the phone call, I would not even remember some of it.

We were very lucky on referral day, since Jon and I were both "working" from home that day and could receive the phone call together. I put working in quotes because although Jon was able to get in quite a bit of work, I think I managed to only get out a few emails before it got crazy.

I was in touch with my parents via phone and email and they were glued to the rumor sites as much as I was. I was also emailing and texting my sister and a couple of friends every few minutes.

The rumor was that referrals were coming and that the 14th would be in but here is what I did not include in my little updates in this post. Even after China announced that the cutoff date for referrals was March 14, our agency did not think we were in. They interpreted the announcement from China to mean that referrals would only include up to the 13th and that we would be next. Of course I am nothing if not stubborn so I was still thinking we were in.

I had just gone downstairs to force myself to eat something since I was started to feel really yucky. That's when the phone finally rang. I screamed at Jon to get ready and went running upstairs. Of course I had a list of questions to ask and had left space under each question for my notes. HA!!! It was all I could do to get name, province, date of birth. I was not calm, not even close. In fact, I could hardly breathe and therefore couldn't even speak for the first part of the call. Oh, and I was crying. I think the phone call lasted all of about 6 minutes. (Our agency calls with the news and the basic info first, then emails a picture and then has the full report translated.)


Once we received the phone call, we called immediate family and kept hitting refresh on the email looking for the picture. When the picture came in, I had a friend on one phone and my sister on the other. I sort of hung up on my friend, sorry Kristen!! When I saw the picture, I think I screamed "She's in a car.!!!" We emailed the picture to my parents and then skyped them in so we could see them open it.


After that it is a blur of visitors, phone calls, emails, etc. My friend Kristen stopped by to congratulate us and to see if we needed anything.

Since then we have been busy researching the city and orphanage where LuLu is currently living. We also went shopping on Saturday for a few things that we will need for our trip. Having this happen just before a three day weekend was great. We had time to soak it all in and maybe tomorrow I will even get in an honest days work!!