Annie Joy Morgan

Here is it December and I am way behind on this blog thing.  Getting a referral for a child is such an interesting experience.  I wasn't expecting a call on October 15th AT ALL.  My cell phone rang and the Virgina area code got my heart racing.  There was no reason for our agency to call me unless they had a file for us to look at.  So began our official journey to Annie Joy Morgan.  Justin and I consulted doctors, prayed and discussed, and studied the information we had and then I submitted our letter of intent to adopt Han Yu Lu on October 22nd.  She will be 2 years old when we get to travel for her, in January.   She will sadly have her 2nd birthday just a couple of weeks before we are there to scoop her up and tell her she is loved.  There are many hoops to jump through between that referral call and your Gotcha day..but we are slowly getting all our hoops jumped through.  We received our RA (referral approval) on October 26th.  Currently, we are waiting on TA (travel approval) which could be next week or in 4 weeks, however, the trend has been to get TA fairly quickly.

These are the referral pictures that we received from our agency.  They were taken when she was about 14 months old.  What a cutie!

It is certainly hard to not love that little face!  We struggled with her name...since we hadn't already decided what it would be before we saw her face.  Justin kept deciding on a name and then would call her by that name until I didn't like it and would throw out something else.  hahaha!  Poor Justin!  It is hard to name a person in a picture!  We finally settled on Annie Joy and haven't looked back.  Annie was born in the same city as Emma and resides at the same orphanage.  We never dreamed we would go back to the same Province but God had another idea.  We were blessed to find out that a recent mission team had spent time with Annie and were able to send some additional pictures of her.  

She maybe doesn't have the best hair cut in the world..but she has hair!  We were told she is shy and cried easily when strangers came into the room.  This is good!  We want her to be afraid of strangers, and while it will make it very difficult for her on the day we shake her world upside down, in the long term it will be so great for her attachment to us.  Once she decides we are safe...she will stick with us for safety.   Right now I am waiting for an update on her as well as more pictures!  Checking my email WAY too many times a day, hoping they will arrive even when I know it is night time in China.   

Projected travel will be January 6th or January 20th and that is what we wait for now.  So between now and then...I am the queen of lists...lists for everything....Christmas presents, menus, sporting events and outing between now and January, to do lists, shopping, Costco, and grocery lists, packing lists for EIGHT people, things to take care of lists...etc etc etc...but I am really working to not forget the most important list...my thankful list!  Thankful for this season that we celebrate our Saviors birth, thankful for God's leading us to adopt again, thankful for each of our uniquely created children, thankful for our many extended family members that are so precious to us, thankful for the memories we have of Grandpa Miller and Grandma Knox who left this earth in the last year, thankful for our church family and our community, thankful for Jesus Christ and His love for us!  There are details to work out, future doctors appointments that are scary, milestones that we will slowly reach but not without much difficulty, but we know He is in the details and He delights when we seek Him through each day, task, goal, difficulty, season, and joy we experience.