Referrals!!!

I am just so excited that my friend Debbie from Church, who lives just a few miles from me, just received her referral for her beautiful daughter LILY HOPE!!!

The funny story is that for years I hosted swim lessons during summer for people at our church who wanted to come. A good friend from church taught them and she basically just used our pool. Well back in the summer of 2005 we were having our first Home Study visit with our social worker and it was going a bit long and the swim lesson kids and parents started to show up. Debbie and her daughter Hannah arrived for swim lessons and walked in while we were still visiting with our social worker. Debbie and her husband were not in our Sunday school class but I knew who they were and that they were thinking of adopting from China. Since our social worker was there I introduced them and shortly after our social worker left and Debbie and I proceeded to have a lengthy conversation about adopting from China. Since Debbie was already starting to collect documents for the paper chase I encouraged her to check out our agency and so they did. Within a week or so they were signed up with our agency and the process officially began. Officially Debbie and her hubbie started the process about 6 months before us and their log in date ended up being just 3 months after us but their referral came 1 year and 4 months after ours. We use to talk about how we would get our girls close together but that did not end up happening. BUT, little Lily was born mid September 2007 so she is only 11 months younger than Mia and I am sure they will grow up as dear friends. Another cool thing is that Lily is from Hunan so they will have GOTCHA in the same room we did and will probably have the same guides we had-- way too cool!!! I cant believe Mia will have a "sister" from the same province very close in age living only a few miles away attending the same church!!! I am just on cloud 9 as this is just an amazingly wonderful family who has waited what seems a lifetime to see their babies face.

Soooooo without further ado, Here is Little Lily Hope:

CONGRATS ERICKSON FAMILY!!!!