Our journey to baby Allison

It all started on February 10, 2006. After a long thought process , we submitted our adoption application to Accept (our adoption agency) and started the long journey to meet our future daughter, baby Allyson. We've talked about adopting a baby on and off through the years but the idea was never materialized. With the encouragement from Grace's mom, we re-visited the idea of adopting a baby girl from China and decided to move forward with the process. We were told that it would take at least 12 to 18 months for a placement. We called the adoption agency often and hoped that our calls could expedite the process but the answer was always " we don't know". Finally in early February 2007, we learned that the group 120-p (our group number is 121-p) was leaving for China in late February. We knew our timing was finally near. Grace had been hinting (O.K., telling) Michael to vacate one of the bedrooms upstairs. Michael held his ground thinking "what was the rush, we still got plenty of time". Finally, Michael took the first step and moved the mattresses out of the room on March 7, 2007 (To be honest, Michael had no idea why he decided to call Salvation Army the night before :-)) Then it happened !!! Grace received a call the next morning. It took the caller three times to explain from where she was calling before Grace realized it was a call from the adoption agency (they had never called us before). The agency informed us that they found a match and we would be traveling to China in May to pick up our baby girl. Her Chinese name is Huang Wang Dan. She was born on July 2, 2006 in Hubei province, Huang Gang city. The seemed endless wait was finally over. We are very happy and very excited to finally find our baby girl, Allison J. Chang.