My Best Guess: Lily Between March 17-April 10

I know this seems like a wide date range but I am guessing we will see Lily's face between March 17 (3 weeks from the last referrals - pretty unlikely for the CCAA to do this twice in a row) and April 10 (45 days from the last referrals). Of course this is a guess.

Now that we are close, a lot of my co-workers and friends are asking questions. What will happen when we get the picture? Well...we may or may not know that our referral is on it's way to our agency. Referrals are delivered by DHL to the adoption agencies and then it is the agency that will call us and give us the information in the packet that is in English and tell us to come to their office to sign papers, see pictures, etc. Agencies didn't know this month that referrals were on the way so a lot of people got calls in the morning and were told to expect their referral call that day. A lot of people found out on www.chinaadopttalk.com (Rumor Queen) that referrals were starting to arrive and then they called their agencies. Ideally, our agency will know that our package is coming , they will let us know and Jeff and I can arrange to be off work so we can get to their office ASAP. Michelle, our agency rep, will call us and tell us Lily's Chinese name, date of birth, weight, maybe describe some pictures and tell us to come NOW. A lot of her referral information may be in Chinese and they will have to send it to their China reps for translation which could take 24 hours or so.

Once we get the referral package, we will accept it unless there is something glaringly wrong. Our agency will send our acceptance back to China and then we will wait for China to send us back approval to travel (our TA). When we get that, we can schedule our consulate appointment (the appointment we have to have before we come back to the US), etc. Our flights and hotel can then be booked around the consulate appointment. Ultimately we will end up travelling about 6 weeks from when we see Lily's face.

This really feels like the final countdown. Jeff and I are experiencing excitement like none we have had during this entire process. I can't stop thinking about Lily and where she might be, how old she is, how long it will be until we hold her, if someone is nurturing her and keeping her safe and warm and healthy. Jeff has been taking his breaks at work to make lists of pediatricians and even researched carseats on the internet yesterday. We are so close. So, so close. It's been 5 years and 4 months since we started this journey. I hope some day Lily will truly know how much we wanted her, planned for her and dreamed of her for so long.