Out of the Blue

Since I was late in starting this blog, I thought I'd do another photo flashback to the day we received our referral of Jin-Ri. It was the afternoon of Friday, December 5th, 2008. I had to stay home all day because I had several different appointments scheduled with floor companies that were coming to give estimates for sanding and refinishing our scratched foyer floor (that's a whole other story). One guy had just left and there was about an hour to go before the next appointment. I don't think the doorbell even rang because I would have heard it, so I was surprised to see a Fed-Ex envelope sitting there when I opened up the door to let the next flooring guy in. I took one look at the return address on the envelope and I knew what it was. Even though it was all I could think about, I had to put it aside while I dealt with the floor guy. But when he took a few minutes to make his calculations, I couldn't help myself, I ripped open the envelope to see what was in it. As I quickly flipped through the pages, there she was.

Here are the first photos I saw of Jin-Ri. It took me a minute to process the whole thing, but I thought she was so cute and tiny and perfect.




So we didn't get "The Call" that everyone talks about in adoption circles. I had always expected that someone would call us to present our referral, but nope, we just got a surprise package in the door one day, out of the blue. And doesn't it just figure that John was out of town for that weekend. He rarely has to travel for business during the weekend, but on that particular weekend, of all times, he was in Zurich and wasn't going to be home until Sunday night, not to mention that his cell phone wasn't working there.

It was almost midnight in Zurich, and I knew he was planning to meet up with his friend, AJ, so I found his number and gave him a call, but he didn't answer. A few minutes later, AJ called back and I told him to tell John to give me a call because I had a big surprise for him. John hurried back to his hotel, and he then had his own share of technical difficulties trying to get his laptop to work so he could look at the e-mail I sent him. It's sure a good thing for all this technology today, or he would have had to wait until Sunday night to see her for himself. So after 13 months of waiting for our referral, our first moment of seeing our daughter and reviewing her file together was from across the ocean.