How Could I Forget!

So I was doing a little blog hopping this evening and I jumped over to "A Day in the Life of the Little Sister from China". And what did she remind me of?! That it was two years ago this week that we received the referral for our little girls!

It was around 9pm in Varese, Italy on Friday, August 25, 2006 when we got "the call." That was about 2pm central time. I knew the call was coming soon because I had been following the Rumor Queen and knew that as of Thursday referrals were coming into various other agencies across the country. It was stated that referrals were covering LIDs through 7/22/05. Since we were LID 7/15/05, I knew we had made the cutoff. I was so excited!!!

When we received the call from our agency that evening I was so nervous that my hand was shaking while I was taking the notes from our coordinator Vonda. We were given her Chinese name, the meaning of her name, her date of birth, her weight and height at her 6 month appointment and the location where she was currently living. I remember that I was upstairs at the computer in the loft and Jason was downstairs on the couch so we were basically in the same room and he could hear everything that was being said. Vonda then told us that they would send the rest of the information via UPS.

Later that evening we received a grainy, scanned photocopy of her referral picture. It was our first look at our baby girl!


I'll tell you the truth - I thought she was funny looking. And she looked so BIG to me! Her photo was not what I was expecting. I remember hearing how some people fell in love as soon as they saw the picture. I was NOT one of those people!

Most or our referral group received their UPS packages on Monday but because we were in Italy and the delivery time was longer, we didn't get our package until 10:00 AM on Tuesday, August 29, 2006.

Now we were living on the grounds of a large, 400-year-old Italian villa and, like most Italian homes, there was a main gate which needed to be buzzed open to allow vehicles onto the property. When one entered the property there were two roads - the one that went straight went to the villa and the one that went right went to our home. Remember, I had only been in Italy about a month at this time and I did not speak ANY Italian, so when the UPS man buzzed our gate phone, it was only because I was expecting a package that I knew to let him into the property. I went outside and waited for him to drive up. He didn't come and he didn't come and he didn't come. It shouldn't have been taking so long. So I started running down the gravel road. I got all the way to the end and there was the UPS man - he had gone up the wrong road and was LEAVING because he couldn't locate me. I was so relieved to have caught him before he went out the gate. I DO NOT THINK I COULD HAVE GONE ONE MORE DAY WITHOUT THAT INFORMATION!

Jason was at work since it was 10:00 AM on a Tuesday morning. He worked 30 minutes away and carpooled with some other men so it wasn't possible for him to come home. I opened the package without him becase there was no way I could have waited until 6pm to open it with him. Instead, I scanned the photos and sent them to him at work. Hopefully, I was on the phone with him too but I don't remember that part.





We would not get to meet Wren until October 30, 2006 - two months away.

Oh yeah, and looking back at my emails, we still hadn't decided on a name. On that same Tuesday, after we had gotten the UPS package, I had sent an email to Jason asking him to pick his favorite name out of my list. We had discussed names but we still weren't sure. My top three choices were Wren, Fiona and Livia. Jason didn't like Livia but he did like Guinevive - except I said I would call her Vivi and he didn't like that. I also liked the name Mary Stuart (since Stuart is my grandfather's and brother's name). But if you remember your English history, Jason said that Mary Stuart was Mary Queen of Scots and that her cousin Elizabeth I had beheaded her. Wren's cousin is named Elizabeth Ryan and Jason didn't think that had good karma. We both liked the name Fiona but I just had a hard time seeing a Chinese Fiona. So, Wren it was!

And one more thing, it took a couple of weeks, but I was eventually fell in love with those referral pictures before we traveled to China! :-)