Annie is 7

Three years ago in April, Charlie and I started our adoption journey when we filled out an application with Heritage to adopt a 4-6 year old girl from China. Shortly after that, I was going through the Heritage website and ran across the Waiting Children progam for kids with minor medical needs. I am not sure why we had not considered this program before, but there was one little girl on the list named QiuQiu. She had the most amazing smile that I just couldn't forget. I kept looking at her picture and showing it to others and we finally decided to ask Heritage about adopting her.

Well, it turned out that another family had found her. We were sad but knew then that we were going to pursue a SN child. At that time Heritage got a new list of SN kids every few months. The next list was due around the first of August. We got to work on our dossier and were close to being ready to send it to China. I had been logging into the agency site daily to check for the new list and one night (August 2 2005) I saw an email that QiuQiu was unexpectedly available for adoption again. I had somehow missed the first posting and there were numerous emails after it from people who were interested.

The next day I was on the phone to my friend Laura (grandma to a little girl from China) bemoaning the fact that we had just missed out on the little girl again. At tha tmoment, my other line rang. It was Vicki from Heritage. She said "Do you remember QiuQiu?" I said "of course." She then said "Would you stil be interested in adopting her?" It was August 3, 2005 - but in China, it was August 4 - QiuQiu's 4th birthday.

A little over three months later we met our Annie QiuQiu for the very first time. She is the most amazing child. She is bright, imaginative and very sweet. She makes friends easily and loves to draw and write. Last year in first grade she was invited to read one of her stories at the school's monthly Author's Tea, with her proud parents in the audience. She is very senstive, which sometimes leads to more meltdowns than we would like to see but those are getting few and far in between. She loves to put together her own outfits (sometimes the combinations are very interesting) and try out different hairstyles with her long, gorgeous hair. When we met her she had extremely short hair and she loves her long hair very much. She is a great big sister. She and Bethany have their share (and maybe more) of squabbles but they love each other very much.

Yesterday we had a party at Chuck E. Cheese for 10 kids and 12 adults to celebrate her 7th birthday. She'd been dreaming about this party for months. She was nervous about being the center of attention but did very well and everyone had a blast.

Annie blesses us every single day with her love and sweetness. We can't imagine life without her.