The call!

Wow - so much has happened since our last post. We saw our beautiful daughter's face for the first time on June 18th. I got home for a workshop for reading and saw that there was a new COP list for our agency. I immediately requested to see files for 3 of the girls. As I opened our daughters file, I had a feeling! Then came the part where I had to show Jerry. Normally, he just wasn't all that interested. But it was different this time. He smiled and his eyes twinkled! He read through everything! Long story shorter, we submitted our names to be matched on Thursday, June 19th and had to wait until Tuesday afternoon! What a long weekend - but we filled it with baseball!
Tuesday, June 24th, I took the boys to see Kung Fu Panda as promised. I promised before I realized Tuesday was the day we would get a call from our agency. I figured out how to completely silence my phone and off we went. There I was sitting in a movie theater eating popcorn, when all of a sudden I felt my phone ringing! I excitedly left the movie and answered my phone in the hallway. I had missed it, so I called the number back and it was our social worker! She asked if it was an ok time and I explained that I was at the movies, but yes it was fine. Then she said the most amazing words, "Grand Rapids (that's how we describe/call the home office for our agency - where the COP matching was completed) didn't waste anytime in letting you know that you were matching with your little girl! I cried, said are you sure, and sat down on the floor. I just couldn't believe it. She said some other stuff to me, but really I have no clue what it was. After we hung up, I tried to call Jerry, but he didn't answer. Reluctantly, I went back to the movie, whispered in the boys' ears that they have a baby sister, and sat there dreaming of China while they finished the movie. :) We quickly left the movie when it was over, went to Wal-Mart to buy a doll and a gift bag and brought it home to give to daddy! It was so exciting to watch him react to the doll and run inside to call his parents as I was calling mom. Just amazing! God is so absolutely wonderful and we feel so blessed that he is allowing us to adopt our Hanna Jo.
Now I am busy getting paperwork in order to send off our LOI (Letter Of Intent) and not so patiently wait for our Travel Invitation. We are praying we get to go in September (what a birthday present!), but it could be October (Brooks' birthday) or November (Jerry's birthday).