We Got The Call

Tonight we got The Call we have been waiting to receive. Everything is finally in one place and approved for us to buy our house. We have a closing date of August 11 at 11:00am. It's really happening.

This whole experience has reminded us of another time when we were waiting for The Call. About 12 years agao Bob came home from a camping weekend and said, "I want a baby. I want a baby now." We had talked of adopting a child but had never really done any more than talk about it. So we sat down that night and started making plans. We thought we would adopt a baby girl from China. My husband had been to China with his best friend so he knew what to expect there. So this seemed a logical place to begin. After weeks of home inspections and interviews by social workers and gathering all kinds of legal documents we were finally approved. All of our documents were sent off to China. Now we had nothing to do but wait. I'm telling you right now that I'm not a very patient waiter. We had to wait for nearly a year. That's what the backlog was for people who were adopting from China at that time. Finally in February, 2002 other folks in our group began getting their referrals. But we still waited. Our agency called China every night for weeks to try to find out where our referral was. Finally someone said that we had been denied. They never gave a reason just denied.

We had to back off and regroup for a bit. We then decided to transfer all of our paperwork to Guatemala. Again we began to gather paperwork and start the process all over again. This time though we got a call before we even had all the paperwork ready. They had a newborn baby girl they needed to place. A couple had applied for two children and received referrals for a boy and a girl. They did not know that they would have to pay double for the attorney though so they decided they would only take the boy. This left the little girl with no placement. We quickly accepted her referral. In May we flew to Guatemala and spent a beautiful week with the most adorable little girl you have ever seen. The day came when we had to return home. But the attorney assured us that we would be coming back within the month to bring her home. Two weeks later we got the call that the adoption had fallen through. Apparently the grandparents did not know about the baby. When they found out, they wanted her. We were devastated. It felt like we had now lost two babies but we had no funeral for either of them. I still have the pictures of this little darling packed away. Six long weeks went by with no word from the agency. We finally got a call that they had a little boy. We decided to accept his referral. Now we had to wait for all the paperwork to be processed. In October, to celebrate our fifth anniversary, we flew to Guatemala again to spend a few days with this baby. I tried really hard to not get as attached as I had to the last baby. But I did. About six weeks later we got The Call. Dakota Garcia Was now our son. When could we come and get him. A few days before Christmas in 2002 we brought our five month old son home.

This time The Call was not about a baby. This time we were waiting for a call about the house we want to buy. But so much of the process has been similar. This time we had to find the house we wanted. We had to gather all kinds of documents. Then we had to wait for them to be processed. Then we had to get more documents and wait for them to be processed. And we have waited and waited. It seems like forever. But it really has only been a few weeks. We made our offer on the house on July 2. I am just so excited about this move.

With our first wait, I spent the time making baby clothes and buying baby furniture. This time I'm making curtains and buying things for the house. And packing. We have boxes piled to the ceiling in the dining room. One more week and it will be ours. One more week. It feels so much like that last week we had to wait to go to Guatemala. It seemed like it was an eternity. A week from today we will be homeowners.