Our Journey to Annabelle

Who we are: Daniel & Shelli; children: Josh, age 11; MacKenzie, age 7; Emma-Grace, age 1.

I have always said that I wanted to adopt - and way back when Josh was a baby we tried to adopt a little boy from Vietnam. We discovered he had already been adopted which made us happy that he had a family but it was very disappointing because we had watched video of him and seen pictures and basically fallen in love with him.

Years went by and we eventually had MacKenzie and then Emma-Grace. Each pregnancy seemed harder as I was diabetic and with Emma-Grace I had pre-eclampsia. It looked as though our family was complete with 3 children.

In April, a friend - Seegal who lives in NJ - sent me a link to a website that showed waiting children in China. I immediately rekindled my desire to adopt and sent in an application to Harrah's. I was able to see the beautiful children on the list and fell in love with several children enough to ask for their medical records. There were 3 that I asked for info on - an older girl, a boy and Ning. The way the waiting children's program works is that you petition to adopt a child. You look at their medical records and choose which one fits with your family and abilities and you tell the agency that you are interested in adopting this specific child. Initially we chose another child. As the days went by, I kept having 2nd thoughts. Was she too old. Was she a good fit medically with our family. Would she require more care than I was able to give - did I know enough about her special need? I kept telling myself I had chosen the wrong child. Ning Ning's picture was in my dreams, I thought of her constantly. When the last day to petition to adopt rolled around, I realized, I had to call or email the agency and tell them that I had such strong thoughts about Ning Ning that I wanted to be considered for her. NO ONE else had petitioned for her - why!? She was just adorable and she reminded me of our Emma-Grace so much. It was just meant to be, in my mind... she was our daughter. Daniel agreed and the email went out.

The day of the decisions, I wasn't sure if the agency had read my email in time! I saw a post that the calls were being made. I got a call from Sherry.. she said "I have good news and bad news." I was literally trembling. She told me we were not chosen for the first child, but we WERE chosen for Ning Ning! I told her that I had dreamed that this would happen - literally not just figuratively! I was overjoyed.

Now the paperchasing begins! We received Pre-Approval to adopt Ning Ning from the Chinese government on June 16, 200 (one day after her 2nd birthday. ) We are almost finished - our homestudy was done in record time, our fingerprints are done - we're just waiting for our I-171H and we'll be DTC - which means our Dossier will be sent to China. We hope for all of that to be completed by the first part of August which hopefully means we would receive travel approval (TA) in November.