Match Day: The Call

The call came to the house at 1:05 PM on Tuesday, October 5, 2005. Theresa from CCAI announced, "This is the call!" We conferenced in Deborah, who was working, and Theresa shared that our new daughter is as cute as can be, that she has quite the head of hair, and that we should not worry that the photo she was sending us by email showed her unhappy - in another photo she's smiling!

And then Theresa shared the few particulars that turn our adoption from a theoretical exercise to a real-life event. Our daughter's Chinese name is Lin Hui. "hui" means sunshine or sunlight. She was born December 9, 2004, in Hubei Province. She is currently in foster care, placed there by the Xiaogan Xiaonan District Social Welfare Institute. She appears to be healthy, with negative results on the appropriate medical tests and appropriate antibodies as expected. Her last medical examination was in July; according to the paperwork, at that time she was 25.5 inches long and weighed 15.4 pounds.

After verifying our email addresses, Theresa reiterated that Lin Hui is a healthy baby and wished us luck for the rest of the process. She gave us our travel group number and told us we could expect to travel to China in 6-8 weeks. She started the process of sending us an email message repeating some of the information she shared on the phone and, more importantly, attaching a photo for us to see. And then we finished the call.

Deborah refused to let me open the email or the photo attachment when they arrived in my email inbox. She rushed home - and I think she must have flown most of the way, since she arrived in just a few minutes - so we could open the email and see the photo together. And that's how we met Lin Hui, now Emily.

I saved the photo, cropped it, and printed it several times. I saved multiple versions and finally decided the easiest way to make it available was to save it to our Hocutt Family File Share. So that's where the first photo is, and that's where we'll post additional photos.

After the call, the race to travel begins!