Picture we found of her

Packing for China

I am sitting here with a thousand things I should be doing right now just wishing the time to fly by, we have about 36 hours to go. Not that I would ever want to waste one minute of life but knowing I would rather be getting in the car and heading to the airport than cleaning my house and making sure my number one son, Christopher, has food while we are away. (He is almost 22 but needs his mom!)
The house is buzzing with excitment. I picked up JoAnn from the airport this morning, took care of the banking stuff, went to get my hair done and now I am waiting for Jay to get home from work and mom to drive here. My brother is going to bring his package scale over tonight so we can all weigh our suitcases. We keep weighing them on the human scale!
Now that is the part of the story everyone needs to hear. You are allowed 44 lbs of weight and only one suitcase. Yes, girls, I said ONE. Now I know as a middle aged person that sixteen days of clothes for me do not weigh less than 44 lbs...but I am mostly worried about Amanda! She being a young adult and worried about her appearance wants to bring her hair dryer, curling iron, hair straightener, every beauty product known to man and at least five pairs of shoes! Sorry Amanda, not this trip!
They have explained to us that they will fine the entire travel group if we are over weight. So I keep putting limits on her.
BUT my suitcase, mind you, is full of crayons, coloring books, chocolate bars for the kids in the orphanage, gifts for the nannies, and diapers, baby formula and clothes for Ali. My suitcase weights 42.6 lbs!
Now Jay waited to pack yesterday. He has his clothes (men's clothes weigh less than womens) and my makeup bag he is at 38 lbs! He wants to pack food in his suitcase for the rest of the weight as he doesn't like a lot of foods and is afraid that he will go hungry in China!

It had to be fate!

It was Jay's birthday, October 23, 2004 and we decided to run up to the store without the kids. This is something that doesn't happen often in our house! So after looking around a bit we got in line to pay for our purchases, when we over heard the people in line in front of us on their cell phone. The woman was on the phone talking about getting something to eat and turned to the younger man with her and asked if he would like to go get Chinese food. The man agreed that sounded like a good idea.After they left Jay and I looked at each other and, as always, Jay read my mind... Chinese food sounded great to us also, we had no kids with us and it was Jay's birthday so let's stay gone from home for just a bit longer and spend some "us" time that day. After paying for our stuff we headed out to the car and on to Chinese food.Now you have to understand the area we live in, there is a Chinese restaurant on every corner and in every strip shopping center but we have our favorite that is about 7 miles in the opposite direction of home from the store we were shopping in. AND it was Jay's birthday!! So we headed out to this restaurant passing about seven or eight other Chinese restaurants on the way. In fact I would say there are about thirty Chinese restaurants with in a 7 mile radius of the store we were shopping in.When we got to the restaurant we were seated in a booth with me facing the door and Jay facing me. It was still early before dinner hours and there were not a lot of people in the restaurant. One family caught my attention. It was two white woman that looked like sisters sitting with an Asian baby in a highchair. I was watching the baby and making comments to Jay about how the baby must be adopted. And then I asked him if he had heard about the babies in China. Odd for Jay not to know something, as his brain is a sponge and not much gets past him, but he didn't know about the government and the one child per family law. As we began to talk about this, the door to the restaurant opened up, and in walks the man and woman that were in line in front of us at the store we had just left. They came in and went to sit with the two women and the baby! I could not believe with all the restaurants in this area that they walked into this one. It was fate! We were being lead that day!!Throughout our conversation at dinner Jay told me to do some research on adopting and the baby girls in China. Believe me I didn't have to be told twice.Within two weeks we were attending a workshop on adoption at the Orlando Library, still in the "just looking and learning" phase of our life changing journey. But within an hour we had met a handful of parents that had taken this path along with their beautiful little girls, we listened to the stories and got the information from the spokeswoman and Jay was signing us up!Our fortune cookies that day in the restaurant read Jay's: All eyes will soon be on you!Ginnie's: What you seek is closer to you than you realize.

The First Look at Ali!

Until you wear the shoes you can not understand the way it feels the day your referral comes in. I clicked on my email January 3rd to find the monthly subject of the Stork Alert. My daughter Mallory was helping me take the Christmas tree down. The end of the holiday season always seems to be depressing and having to spend yet another holiday without our new addition had really made me sad. I just wanted it to be our turn. So as I clicked this email that day I read, 'The stork has landed. If you have recieved this email we.....' I yelled for Mallory to come to the computer, this was not the usual monthly 'OTHER lucky families'; this was OUR LUCKY FAMILY! Mallory and I finished reading the email at lightening speed and at the same time as we both began to SCREAM!! And then onto the phone with my husband we went!!!The next step as we had learned though our wait and talking to other families was the phone call from the agency. So to ease our excitement Mallory and I went back to our chore of stripping the Christmas tree and going back and forth with every question that we could come up with; what did she look like, how big was she; would she like us; when would we go to get her and then the question of how old was she. Mallory said she would love a Christmas baby but I told her that the babies were usually around ten months old or so I thought. That would make her a February baby. Mallory then commented on the fact that my husband and I had gotten married in February. Maybe she was born on our anniversary.I had to run errands that day and was gone when the house phone rang. It was our agency. Mallory got the phone call. She told them to give me a call on my cell phone for which I had glued to my hand waiting! The other end of the line said, 'Congratulations we have your referral' I said, 'I am so excited, when was she born?' And I started to bawl when I was given the answer; she was born in February, on the 21st- OUR WEDDING ANNIVERSARY! The only other thing she told me was that Ali had hair?!I was told a package would be mailed to me with her referral photos and I should get it in two days. I said to heck with that, scan them and email them to me!!! Jay made me promise that I would wait for him to get home that night. My mom had decided to drive down from Georgia that day and I had to promise to wait for her before opening the email. But the minute Jay walked in the door that night he ran to the computer along with Mallory and myself and we clicked the attachment. I don't think my computer ever worked slower!!And the three of us just stared. Nobody said anything. We talk about it now, really what were we expecting? After about a minute we were all talking at once. She is the most perfect baby and we could not have picked a baby more perfect for our family. She has Amanda's eyes, Christopher's ears, Chase's nose and Mallory's mouth and chin. She really is our baby!And then Grandma showed up. We had to confess we didn't wait for her but we got to reopen that attachment and get the excitment started all over again!!

Two years of pulling out hair

For those of you reading this story with an understanding to the "Paper Chase" nightmare you can sympathize, but to those of you who have never been in our shoes, you just can not imagine the frustration of putting together a package about yoursef and your family and having so many other factors come into play and the wait and the redoing and the wait.I never started a diary of our adoption because I was told from the start that this whole process would take no more than six to eight months from start to referral. That was November 2004. So two years and four months later I am beyond thrilled that we are on this end of the adoption process. My advice to those who follow in our footsteps, I promise, it will be your turn for a referral soon!We started out on the internet reading other people stories and then we made contact with an agency. They were having an open house at the Orlando library in two weeks and we were welcome to come take a look. And that is what we did. Our second day out of the house in a month without any children! At the time there was no commitment between Jay and I with this adoption decision; we were just going for information and to see what it was all about, or so we thought. After about an hour of talking to the families that had been to China, playing with their girls, listening to the agency's spokeswoman, we were signing our name to the dotted line! I have to clarify this statement...Jay was signing our names to the dotted line. I think this was the most exciting decision that had ever been made in my life!And then the “paper chase” begins. Birth certificates, marriage certificates, health records with letter from the doctor, divorce decrees, local background checks, national background checks, letters from friends, letters from family, letters from employers, pictures of us and the family, a home study social worker coming into your home four or five times, fingerprints, US government immigration papers and so on and so on. Enough to make your head spin and after the initial gathering of all of this it has to be notarized and then authenticated, stamped and re-stamped, mailed here and then mailed there. It is best if you can be on first name basis with your local postman! And then it is all over, and your package is done, and in an envelope, and on it’s way to China! And then you wait. And wait. And wait. Your life put on hold.I admit I lost my temper a few times. There is just so much your agency can tell you as they wait for the Chinese government to shuffle through their stacks and stacks of paperwork and make the decision as to what child will get placed with what parents.All while this is happening the clock is ticking, you have only so long for your Immigrations papers and fingerprints not to expire, which our did. So we started the process over again. Heath check, letters from employers, background check, updated homestudy and then the wait for the immigrations department to reissue our okay!And then the day!!! The most wonderful day of all... the day that the Email from the adoption agency comes that doesn't say other families have gotten a referral, it is the day they say CONGRATULATIONS to you!!!!!!

Camille Vilar December 13, 1995-August 13, 2004

There is no reason why life takes the path it does, but for every person you meet, even for just a minute, life is impacted and forever changed. The story of our adoption starts with the life and death of our step-neice that we had the honor to know and love for four years. Because of the loss of her young life, we were lead on the path to China and to our new daughter. Thank you Camille for leading us to Ali and bringing her to her new forever family.