The day we received the referral for our daughter...

So wow, now that you have seen the quick posting that we posted last night with the amazing news of our referral for our daughter in Bogotá, I thought I'd write something a little more "John" and well tell the whole story.

Monica and I went to visit a great college friend of ours over the weekend in New England who introduced us 11 years ago this very weekend. All weekend long anytime we talked about our future baby people were saying "she" and "her", and this was new to us as it had not been happening very much at all until this weekend. Then we received an email from our lawyer in Bogotá on Friday night that told us that she was going to go to the ICBF office on Monday (yesterday) and hoped to have good news for us. Then there was a posting from a great friend of ours in the Yahoo Group that we are a part of for Colombian families adopting from Colombia. She told us that sister in law in Colombia was told over the weekend that they matched a lot of families & babies this week in Bogotá. We were bouncing off the walls with nervous energy after that and driving the 8 hours back to Virginia today just couldn't happen fast enough knowing that there might be the biggest message of our lives waiting for us while sitting in traffic on the I-95 is painful to be sure.

But sure enough when we arrived home there was an email message from our lawyer letting us know that we had been blessed with a little girl. It was so amazing to begin to actually say that we have a daughter and it really still all just beginning to sink in.

But to tell this story of today or of this weekend doesn't begin to tell our journey that led us to today. It's both a unique story and a story that is echoed throughout adopting families. One of our favorite parts of the story though is how after finding out about this mysterious thing called Parent Initiated Adoption after finding a posting on a Colombian information site from a woman here in the US who called herself "kitsmom" who detailed a direct path to adopting from Colombia that is open to everyone but especially beneficial to Colombian families. While we were excited beyond belief we were also wondering if we could possibly pull something that unknown off, then a woman named Hillary started the Yahoo Group that I mentioned. She and her Colombian husband adopted from Colombia last year through Parent Initiated Adoption and she wanted to create a place for others to talk and learn about this small but wonderful path to adoption. This group has allowed us to ask every question that struck us and to share our journey with other couples who without a group like this we would have never known existed. Just knowing that we were not alone in all of this has helped so much to relieve the added stress that might have come otherwise.

Because of all of the support from all of our family and friends and from the Yahoo Group, we are where we are today, with a referral for our daughter.

Continued good luck as always and we will continue to update everyone with any and all information that we can.

John, Monica and "Baby Girl".