It's official - Annie's here (almost!)

December 1, 2006: Snow day in Chicago - the first big blizzard of the season, folks all over are digging out to get to work, or like me, working from home because it's just too awful to travel. Grandma and Grandpa, howeve, dug out and braved the weather to come over and wait in Glen Ellyn for a call that might not arrive - though rumors were rampant that the "stork was flying" dropping off referrals of Chinese infants around the world. Then, after a nice breakfast of cinnamon rolls, 4 cups of coffee, and working from home all morning - a call! THE CALL. Roughly 11:45 am, the phone rings and... I can't answer it. The caller ID says CCAI, or Chinese Children Adoption International. THE CALL I've been waiting for which I've been waiting over a year and I can't bring myself to pick up the phone... Eventually, I do, but I'm speechless, literally. Luckily Grandma takes over when a woman's voice repeats "hello?" Even more luckily, my speech returns, as it turns out to be Tracie from CCAI announcing that I had been referred a healthy, beautiful 10 month-old girl with the name Ling Su Sang! We got a more details and then Tracie emailed me the picture - it's the passport style photo of chubby cheeks.

Her Chinese name is Ling Xu Sang pronounced: Leeng Soo (as in moo) Song (as in song). Xu means Rising Sun and Sang means Mulberry. She was born on January 30, 2006, incidentally, the first day in the Year of the Dog. Her intake date at the orphanage was February 6, 2006, about a week old. on the call, Tracie told me that she's at Shang Rao Orphanage - I came later to find out there are actually 2 or more orphanages in ShangRao and "Ling" babies are typically babies from the ShangRao City Children's Welfare Center. Either way, Shang Rao is in Jiangxi Province, in Southeastern China (SIDE NOTE: Grandma's extremely happy that we won't need to travel to Inner Mongolia this January). And as of August 25, 2006, she was 25.28 in long, and weighed in at 13.99 lbs. The most important info is that on Saturday, I'll receive a fed-x package on Saturday with more pictures and more importantly, an acceptance letter that I have to fed-x back ASAP. Needless to say, the fed-x man, Carlos, was a bit surprised Saturday when we took his picture as I signed for the package. The package contained 2 more precious photos and a little bit of medical information. It also contained a bit of personality info as well - she likes to laugh, and well, can be obstinate sometimes... I'm sure she'll be a handful!

On Saturday afternoon we went over to Larry & Tina & Anthony's house - to show off the new pictures and more importantly finalize a name. It came down to Lucy, Annie, or Maggie. Annie seems to be the winner!

No news yet on when travel will be, but some folks who received their referrals November 2, are leaving for China this upcoming week! That's would be very fast indeed!

Laurie