Catching Up - The Days After Referral

It has been CRAZY this past week -- exciting-crazy, of course! Lots of e-mails, messages on various Yahoo groups I'm in, phone calls, etc. - it's been hard to keep up. But I really, really appreciate all of the well wishes and congratulations in the Comments section of my blog -- it was a lot of fun to read all of these from all over the world and "meeting" others who have daughters from Guangxi, too. So thank you to these "cyber friends" -- and to all of my "live" friends for all your messages and e-mails. I will be printing these and/or burning a CD of my blog (if I can figure out how to do that!) so that Madeleine will have all these messages to read one day, so she can see for herself how excited everyone was... Thank you.

After I got THE phone call (last Tue.,Oct. 2), I raced home (I was at work when I got the call) to wait for her photos to come through by e-mail. Sally met me at my house. We had pimento cheese and wheat thins for "lunch" while we waited - and waited - for the e-mail to come. After about 20 minutes, I called my agency to find out where the e-mail was - I was dying to get it! They said they'd already sent it, double-checked the address (it was right) and said it should be here... it wasn't. They had also e-mailed her photos to my office - so I logged on to my work e-mail and YES! - they were there! It was SO exciting to open the e-mail and see her beautiful little face -- I couldn't believe it! By the way, the e-mail to my personal e-mail address finally came, but not for another 45 minutes. SO glad I knew how to access my work e-mail from home! Then Sally realized she was late for a meeting and had to go - and I realized we had not taken any pictures to record this special moment. I had not printed her photos out yet and didn't have time to wait, so Sally tried snapping a few photos of me beside my computer screen with her photos pulled up - it actually worked pretty well (see photos :) - although clearly May needs a haircut or SOMETHING! (horrible)- Time for highlights.

The next day my Referral Packet arrived by DHL. I came home from work in time to be there when it arrived - I wanted to be there b/c I wasn't sure if they would leave it with no one home. I had been listening out for the truck, but it was hard b/c some yard men were next door blasting away with leaf blowers... then I was on the phone with someone and thought I heard the truck -- there he was, pulling in the driveway... I ran outside waving my arms, shouting, "Wait, wait, I have to take your picture!" He looked at me strangely while I said I needed to run back inside to find my camera and to please wait... I then explained that he was "delivering my baby!" -- and then explained that I was adopting and he was bringing me her photos and the best package I would ever receive in the mail. He got it then, and was happy to pose for pictures. And I asked him to get out of the truck and take MY picture with the package :). Then I opened it so he could see her pictures (I had already seen them by e-mail, of course). He had a big grin and said she was beautiful (of course :). So now I will always notice the DHL trucks and wonder how Patrick the DHL guy is doing.