Introducing Lian Mei's Baby Sister!!!

It is hard to describe our emotions right now. We just "met" our beautiful little girl, Feng Xiao Nu, this morning. We now long to meet her in person sometime in the next 5-8 weeks. In Lian's words, "I am so excited! I love my baby sister so much!" We couldn't say it any better.

The quick facts are that she is 10 months old (bday is 9/18/06), which is exactly how old Lian was at her referral. We are praying we will be able to celebrate her first birthday with her in China. She was born in Fengcheng in the province of Jiangxi (Lian was born in Jiangsu) and it looks like she has been in foster care through the Fencheng Social Welfare Institute. She is 24 inches and 14.9 pounds. We are still awaiting the translation of her personal and medical history, along with what they say about her personality. But so far they say she is active, fond of listening to music, playing with toys, has a ready smile, quick in reaction, impatient sometimes, and is closest to her caretaker. We still don't know what we are going to name her. Lian has some ideas and we're waiting to see if any characteristics jump out at us as we look at her picture. Until then, she is Feng Xiao Nu, which I'm still waiting for Dano to translate ;).

I knew we might receive the phone call today, but it was already noon and I hadn't heard anything. Ironically, I had just said to Shelley, my sister-in-law, that it seemed strange to not have anyone around with which to celebrate. When we received Lian's referral, i was in my office and everyone got to celebrate with me. Well, Lian's friend, Emma Balma, had a birthday party today at 11:30 am. In the midst of the party, my phone fell out of my pocket and I didn't realize it. So it was now 12:30 pm and I realized that my phone was gone. I found it on the ground, picked it up and had missed two phone calls from our adoption agency. When I called back, the intern answered because everyone had gone to lunch. He didn't know where our file was. I hung up so upset that I missed the call. Then I tried again and pleaded with him to just get me the basic information. He was able to this time and I started jumping around in total excitement. The cool thing is that so many of my friends were at this party, so I was able to celebrate with so many friends. I thought I would cry in this moment, but it was my friends who were teary. I was just so excited, I could barely think straight. Then off Lian and I drove to Tacoma to pick up the paperwork. Dano leaves for a three day work trip tonight, so we were so thankful that he was able to see her picture before he left.

We started this process in January 2005. Now we have to wait a little over a month to welcome this baby girl into our home. Thank you for your prayers, words of encouragement, tears and joy, as we've been on this journey. We are so blessed to have so many friends and family in our lives.