Everything changed

One year ago today, we were getting ready to go to Chicago for Great Wall China Adoption's East Meets West conference. That's an annual event Great Wall organizes concerning adoption from China. It's quite the educational and informational event.

We had been LID for a little more than one year, and were facing an ever-lengthening wait before we would be matched with our child. A couple of weeks earlier we had submitted a special needs application, but we figured it would be a while before we heard anything about it.

Then, everything changed.

We were in JCPenney when my cell phone rang. It was Stephanie from Great Wall. She had a little boy she wanted us to consider. Talk about shock coming from out of the blue. When I regained my composure, she told me about him. Then, I told her she needed to tell Violet, too, and I handed Violet my phone.

The rest of the time was a blur as we headed off to check our e-mail and the file from Great Wall that awaited us. We were pretty nervous as we opened it and checked out the photos and the information about this little boy named Dang Wenfeng.

You've all heard of love at first sight. Well, that's what it was for us. In our hearts, he became our son right then, and everything changed.

We still had to go through the rational and sensible things, like having our doctor look over the file. Stephanie at Great Wall also had said we probably could talk to one of the speakers at East Meets West, a doctor who specializes in international adoption and who had 4 special needs girls he and his wife had adoption from China.

Well, as they say, the rest is history. The doctors looked over the files and we reached the logical decision to go along with our emotional one.

We were a family.

Look at how much Jake has changed:

Then (actually he is about 9 months old here, as our referral information was about that old, but this was among the first photos we saw.)


Now