[SingleMama2B]

"CALL CAME"???? I just saw this on a 'sister board' and thought that we should have this question too.....

I was at work.... It had taken me about 3 weeks to ACCEPT that the Agency/Facilitator told me that I may "NEVER" see my DD again, and if the "Aunt" (in Russia - that was fighting the adoption) did not follow-thru or was found not elegible/desireable, it wouldn't happen fast.... if the later one was to occur, it would probably be sometime in 2006 - Summer or Fall. I was, to say the least, DEVASTATED. It took me 3 weeks to get my emotions in check, and then start concentrating on the Holidays for my neice, nephew and godchildren. I am sitting at work, and the phone rings in the morning. It is the Agency Rep. saying that I need to be in Russia in 5 days!!!! I got very made, and told the rep. that this WAS NOT A FUNNY JOKE!!! She then got very stern with me, and said: "Hang up the phone, call the airlines, call the hotel, get your passport out and then call me back!!!". I was in schock!!! I didn't even think of asking about the Aunt, until the next day. I was told that the MOE would explain everything to me. I had STOPPED getting prepared (gift shopping, clothes, necessities for DD, finding out additional information, etc.) and would need to be super woman to get everything done.... NOT TO MENTION... making arrangements at work... as I do not have anyone to cover my job

Everything did come together, and I left on a plane to Moscow in less then 5 days with everything I needed!

Blessings...............

[tigger44]

I had just showered and dried my hair, when I walked through the house and heard the ringing phone. It was the best call I had ever answered! We were told to leave for Russia in exactly one week, and thankfully everything came together.

We got caught up in the new laws regarding the length of time children must remain available on the Federal databank, among other unnecessary crap! We had waited seven months, and I was slowly giving up on the whole thing. Of course, when it was time to go we had a gazillion things to do and the house was not child proofed until several days after we were home. We still have a few unfinished projects, but hopefully they'll be done soon.

[Aphi86]

We were in the car looking at brick on homes! It was the day before Thanksgiving 2005 and the sun was setting and we were having a BIG discussion over brown vs. red brick and Austin Stone vs. Oklahoma Chop! It is funny now, because we ended up not building that house. That was the longest holiday weekend because we had to wait until Monday to see her picture and get the full medical on her. Luckily, I am clever and found her picture in the databank. It was an awful picture (the fuzzy b/w) but the minute I saw her, I knew it was her, even before I had translated the page to see if the names matched. Everyone in the family that weekend told me not to get attached to that picture until I knew for sure. And, that Monday the packet had not arrived so I emailed the link off the database to the cw and said "It is ok, I can tell you this is my daughter." She was shocked when she looked and said, I was right!

[Vicki H]

Believe it or not, we were just at the end of my work baby shower, there were just a few of us there yet.

One girl made a comment "wouldn't it be awesome if they called you here at your shower". Sure enough as Kyle was loading the gifts into his car, his cell phone rang and it was our agency telling us we had one week to be in Russia!

[Pinkie]

The Referral Call came one evening when I was home. I was on my home phone talking to my brother and could hear my cell phone ringing in the bedroom. My brother asked if I was going to answer it and I said "NO WAY! Who do I want to speak to at 8.30 in the evening!!!" I finished the conversation with my brother and temporarily forgot about my cell phone. By the time I looked at *missed calls* and realised it was a call from my Agency it was too late to call them (trust me I tried) ........I do wish if I could have seen my own face!

I didn't sleep a wink as my file had only been in Russia since April and it was only the beginning of June!! But I knew, I just knew it was THE CALL. And I was right, but it took me till about 11.30am to get hold of the person I needed to speak to, to find out the details.

The Court Call, is a little less dramatic. I was in the office and my cell phone rang. I could see it was the Agency, I jumpt off my chair, took three deep breathes and very calmly answered!!

Good Idea for a Thread SingleMama2B.

[kcgirlinfl]

I was at work. I was in the middle of working on a huge report when my phone rang. I didn't recognize the number on the display, so I let it roll to voice mail. (The call was the last thing I expected, because another family with our agency that was also waiting had talked to the director earlier in the week who had told her not to expect anything to happen this week). At this point we had been waiting 6 months for a referral.

Anyway, when I finally finished my report & checked my messages, it was the girl from our agency saying "Call me back, we have some news for you". I just knew this was it. I had to go into the bathroom to compose myself & take some deep breaths before I called her back! She told me they had a referral for us, and that we needed to be in Moscow in 2 weeks. (This was on a Friday. The following Wednesday we had to fly to KC for my sister's wedding, ack! We got home on a Monday and left 4 days later - on Friday the 13th - for Moscow). I practically ran down the hallway at work, laughing & crying, on my way outside to use my cell phone. At this point only one of my co-workers knew we were adopting, so everyone was wondering what the heck was wrong with me. They thought someone had died.

I tried to call DH, but he was at a Doctor's appointment. Then I tried to reach my mom, but she was in a meeting. I finally reached my dad & told him the good news. I had such a hard time concentrating the rest of the day! When I finally got home, DH & I just sat & stared at each other for the longest time. I think we were in shock!

It was a crazy couple of weeks getting ready for two trips and praying everything would work out.

It's fun to re-live those moments!

[Kasey]

First time, I was at home, DH was at a Phillies game with all the guys in his family (dad, brother, etc..), so I called him on his cell. They had a great time celebrating at the game and Jim Thome hit his 400th homerun (6/14/04)that night too, so it is a great keepsake for Alek's book.

This time I was at work, caught me completely off guard since we were not expecting anything until September. It was very chaotic but exciting!!

[boatsun]

Ours wasn't a call but an email. I am on the computer all day long, so it was unusuall for me not to have checked my email before 10:30 at night. We were on the waiting list for a girl when our agency sent us the email about a little boy they were trying to find a home for. My wife was already in bed and I told her to come to the home office and look at the email. At first she said that she would look at it the next day, but ten minutes later she was looking at the pictures and the medicals they sent. We looked at each other and knew that we had fallen in love with him right then. A couple of weeks later we were on the plane to Vladivostok going literaly 3/4 the way around the earth to meet him.

[Waiting2Be]

I was at work in a meeting and never expected to get 'the call' so I didn't have my cell phone with me. Fianlly after about and hour someone came into the room and told me that my husband was trying to find me and that he had me paged several times and I was to call him right away. My heart was pounding out of my chest I ran to my desk and called him, I thought someone had died, we had been waiting 7 months for a referral and had been told for the past three months that it was coming any day, my dh and I had discussed the day before changing agencies or doing something we thought it would never happen, and that day July 1st it did, I called my DH and he said we leave for Russia in 5 days and it's a girl, I could barely breathe, I left work right away and we went home to complete our visa paperwork, we had a party scheduled for July 4th and it was an extra special celebreation that year. Of course it took us 11 months to get our dd home, but now all is well.

[KatieIC]

We adopted two ALMOST at the same time...got an email in Feb 05 to call the agency the next morning, very mysterious. It was about my son...but after Trip 1 we got caught up in all the reaccred stuff...after about 9 mos of waiting for a court date everyone started indicating that the region's judge just may not budge - ever. We were devastated...shortly thereafter got a call about a girl - travelled a couple of weeks later, court 3 mos later. We were so thrilled to have her, but our hearts were so heavy still for the boy we had met in 05.

Our beautiful Finley had been home about a month and we were at an adoptive families playgroup, sitting next to my caseworker, and her cell phone rang. She got tears in her eyes immediately - turned to me - and said...do you want to go back to Russia? The judge, after 13 mos, had changed his mind.

And in June 2006, John finally came into our (now complete) family!!

[B@M]

We were originally waiting any day for a referal for a child from Belarus. We got a phone call from our agency telling us that Belarus was temporarily on hold. A few weeks later we got another call telling us they had children available in Russia if we wanted to switch countries or we could stick it out and hope Belarus reopened soon. We picked Russia and are so glad we did.

[Chris3148]

When we got our referral call, we were at work. Our director called Dh and told him, she didn't bother me since she knew it was only my first week back at work. (teacher) Dh of course didn't call me, but came home early from work with a medical report and video in his hands!

When we got the word for trip #1, we were shopping for a crock pot at Kohl's! It was two days before Christmas and Dh and I were in the "feeling completely helpless mode." We had lost the referrals for our girls almost a month before this and were still trying to heal from the pain and were trying to decide if we would accept the referrals of new siblings that had a more "risky" medical report.

Anyway, it was our director who was calling Dh on his cell phone. I heard him say hi to her and thought, "God won't she leave us alone. We said we would tell her our decision right after the holiday!" I looked at Dh and tears were rolling down his face, but he was smiling???? He kept saying yes and thank you a lot. Then he stopped and said let me tell Christine. Dh then told me that our director got word today from the MOE that our girls status was turned back to adoptable today, they wanted to give us the referrals back, and they had a travel date for us!!!

So, now I am standing there in Kohl's crying holding a crockpot in my hand. I couldn't believe it, truely a miracle.

But of course we had our US holidays, then the Russian holidays, so we finally were able to travel the week of Jan. 21st. It was almost a month later, but really it didn't matter-all that mattered was that we would actually get to FINALLY see our girls.

So, 5 months after getting their referrals, we were in Siberia during one of the coldest consecutive days on record! And even though we couldn't be outside for more than 5 minutes without my eyelashes, nostrils, hair, etc. freezing-the -40 F weather didn't affect our warm hearts that week!

The call for court was actually an e-mail from my Dh, again they called him since he is easier to reach. We only had 5 days until we had to leave. So, I took my FMLA two days later so I would have the days needed to finish all the last minute arrangements.

[beckyww]

I was in the Chicago airport on 1/27/06 with my boss, eating a quick slice of pizza and a salad before coming home to San Antonio. I had called our agency the day before to create a new lower sphincter for them because we had given them our dossier in 11/04, and been registered In St. Pete since 7/05 - and I was flat sick of waiting. I was so sick of waiting that at Christmas, when they sent us a tree ornament - I threw it away.

They called Keith to say they had a referral for us. Keith immediately called me. I couldn't even speak, I was so stunned.

We got our match packet the next day.

The process was agonizing. It was twice as expensive as projected. But yes, it was all soooooo worth it. Julia is a six-year-old treasure who was meant to be with us.

Becky
The Woodworth Family in Beautiful San Antonio TX

[Amysue1112]

Great thread!

Well, many of you guys know, i have pretty bad back problems....well, on Feb. 15th 06 I got a call from our case manager.."we were officially registered in our 2nd region, Izhevsk"...I was on my way to my MD to discuss surgery. It was not major surgery, so I decided to go through with it....we had waited sooo long already, there was no way things would go quickly in the new region...RIGHT!

So, a month later, I was lying in my living room, on our pull out couch-on BEDREST post-surgery....and got another call from our case manager. She said.."I was calling to see how you were feeling..and if you are ready to go to Russia??" WHAT! So much for bedrest!!! I paced all around, holding ice packs on my back....OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH!!!!!!! It was also our referral's first birthday.

Sadly, we lost her in-country as her birthmother came back a day before we were to meet her (although she has never been back again, poor kid). But luckily we got another referral....our sweet Hannah, and couldn't be happier!

When we got to call from our IA doc (while in Russia) that Hannah was healthy, we were in a BandB in the middle of NOWHERE, and NOONE spoke English. The calls couldn't go to the rooms (or maybe they just didn't understand English enough to transfer the call to our room) so a lady came upstairs and demonstrated "phone". We ran downstairs and got the "green light" in the lobby of the B and B.

[Sally26]

I was at school (I'm a teacher). They called on the school phone and our case manager ask if I were alone. I sort of knew it was the call but was leary as dh had just emailed her that week about our frustation that she wasn't answering our questions, returning calls, answering emails... She didn't have medical information, but told me to go to my computer she would send pictures. I fell in love with her picture, too. She looked like my sister's baby pictures and if the sketchy information I had was right she was 5 mths old that very day!!! Could I really be getting a baby that young!!! I called dh and sent him the pictures. I'm crying and jumping up and down in front of my computer. I had planning period and my aid and all my students were in the adjoining room. After talking to dh I got my aid to come see. Pretty soon the other teacher, and aid are in my room and we're all jumping up and down and crying - not for long the students were alone, but the door was open. Later that day we got the medical information and the call back from IA doc. IA doc. put her at average to high risk, it put a damper on our celebratory dinner, but after much research and agony we accepted her. Best decision ever made!!!