The Howard Family: Happy Referral Day

One year ago today, we received the phone call that would change our lives forever. The phone call that we had waited over three long years to receive. The one that would lead to us seeing pictures of our beautiful girl for the first time and learning about her life before us.

I will never forget the waiting. We expected Amelia's file in July, but it never arrived. We continued to wait. We hoped for August but nothing came. September ticked by, and we began to lose hope that it would be the month that we saw our daughter's face. The morning of September 26, 2012, my cell phone rang at school. I saw that it was Karla's number, and I knew that it was THE phone call. My co-workers and I had a plan in case the big moment happened at school, and the plan went into action. I ran out of the room to the counselor's empty room to talk to Karla. She got David on the line with a conference call, and we heard what we had waited so long to hear. The file was here. Her American name was Ruby! She lived in an orphanage in Chongqing. She was 15 months old but tiny with some delays. Karla was sending us the file to review, and we should let her know if we had questions or made a decision. We had 2 weeks to decide.

David and I made plans to meet at home to review the file together. We read the file before looking at pictures. We did some yard work. We looked at pictures. We did more yard work. We looked at more pictures. We finally discussed concerns and made plans for dinner. We decided to take Bailey to Stone's Throw for his birthday. Over dinner, we knew she was ours, but we wanted some doctors to review her file just to be sure. Once the doctors gave us the okay, we officially accepted "Ruby", aka "Yao Yao", soon to be "Amelia Mae Howard" as our own.

I can hardly believe that a year has passed since we got our first glimpse at our daughter. God definitely knew what he was doing! It was a long wait to this moment, but it was worth every bit! It would be three more months until we were able to actually hold her in our arms, but we knew that Amelia was in China and that we were headed to get her.