"The Story of Us" began on May 14, 1999....the night before I (finally) graduated from Texas Woman’s University....at a skate/swing dance party thrown by the Singles Group at Grace Outreach Center. I met Bob that night and began a wonderful friendship.

Being two of only a handful of divorced people in the singles group, we started going to dinner and then for coffee at Starbucks to talk about our lives as divorced people starting over again. After a few months of just being friends, we decided to start dating. Our friendship quickly turned to love and we became inseparable! On June 3, 2000, the night before my 28th birthday, Bob proposed and of course, I said yes! On August 12, 2000, we were married with our closest friends and family in attendance. For a few years, we just enjoyed each other. We traveled, we built a house, and we enjoyed our dogs. In July of 2002, we started talking about starting our family....it was time to share our love with a child. We looked at international adoption and focused mainly on Romania. But once we got the information on Romania, we found out the country was closed to international adoptions. Even though we were disappointed, we decided to stay with international adoption. One night, I started looking through some literature on other countries open to international adoption and came upon a flyer for China adoption. It had the header “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” and a small picture of the most beautiful baby girl I had ever seen. As sure as I was sitting there, I knew that was where our daughter was.

The next morning, I asked Bob how he would feel about adoption from China. He also felt the same thing....our daughter was in China waiting for us. After more searching on the Internet and after talking with a couple that had just returned from China with their twin girls, we decided on Great Wall China Adoption in Austin, Texas, as our adoption agency. We submitted our application and then waited for approval from the Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs to adopt. That approval was received on November 5, 2002. We then had to wait for China to decide whether to keep their current quota system or lift it, which would mean that we could submit our paperwork in 2003. The third week of December, we were notified that the quota was lifted and we could submit our dossier! We received our contract with GWCA shortly thereafter and signed it immediately. On January 2, 2003, we received our Adoption Manual and officially started the paperchase.

The day after Christmas 2002, we broke ground on our new house. We decided that our current house was just too small for all of us and a baby, so we decided to build a new house on the outskirts of McKinney. While we were going through all of our home study appointments and collecting documents, we were also packing up our house and getting ready to move. On March 19, 2003, we moved into our new home, complete with an adorable room the perfect size for a nursery with a window seat. We unpacked and settled in, all the while collecting documents, having our fingerprints taken and waiting for our I171-H.

On May 22, 2003, Bob’s 34th birthday, we received our I171-H!!!!! Finally, the paperchase was complete. We were able to get everything certified, authenticated and sent to GWCA the 2nd week in June. Our dossier boarded a plane for China on June 13th and was logged in at the CCAA on June 25th. Then the official waiting began!

Our lives completely changed on March 9, 2004. I received a call at work on my cell phone from Winona Wickham at GWCA. She said, “Hello, Erin? Or should I say Mommy?” Believe it or not, I kept my cool and was able to write everything down. Our daughter’s Chinese name is Yuan Qiu Lu (soon to be Mollianne Grace Qiu), her date of birth is May 14, 2003, and she was in the Nanning Social Welfare Institute in Guangxi Province. I got off the phone and immediately called Bob to tell him the news. And then I had to wait until 10:03 that evening to look at Mollianne’s pictures! She was gorgeous and looked so sweet and innocent. We couldn’t wait to hold her in our arms.

On April 15, 2004, I retired from my position as paralegal to a family law firm in McKinney and started my new position as a stay-at-home mom, or Homemaker Extraordinaire!

On May 5, 2004, we boarded a plane and took a long trip halfway across the world to our daughter....Dallas to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Tokyo, Tokyo to Beijing. We saw Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City and The Great Wall. We ate wonderful food, met our travel mates and longed for our daughter. On May 9, 2004, we boarded one more plane and flew to Nanning, our daughter’s province. We slept fitfully that night and awoke very early. We were going to meet our daughter today, May 10, 2004! And the neatest part about it was it was Mother’s Day in the States. We got ready, grabbed the diaper bag, took one last look at the room and went down to the lobby to meet our travel mates.

We got in a bus and drove to the Civil Affairs Office. We were standing in the courtyard and saw a bus drive up. Then ten nannies came in carrying ten babies. The babies were babbling and giggling but we weren’t able to see them very clearly. Then Cindy, our guide, came and told us that they were ready for us. A woman came out and gave a speech about how appreciative China was for us adopting these babies and some other things that we don't remember. Then they started bringing in the babies. Mollianne was the 4th one they brought. We were amazed at how small she was and the fact that she had hair....and lots of it! The nanny put her in my arms and I started crying. We instantly fell in love. Mollianne started crying and we tried to soothe her. After a few minutes, she reached for Bob and once she was in his arms, she calmed down. The rest of the day was a blur, but we remember so vividly the bus ride to the Notary office. We had had her for about 15 minutes by this point and she was sitting on Bob's lap. She looked at us both, stuck her tongue out and made a spitting noise. We copied her and she laughed! It was the most wonderful sound we have ever heard in our lives. And to this day, she loves to do the same thing to make us laugh. Our lives have not been the same since, and we are so in love with this child.

We celebrated her first birthday in China. We shopped, we became closer and closer to the other families in our travel group, and enjoyed being parents. We came home on May 23rd and introduced our daughter to her extended family and friends.

To see more pictures of Mollianne and learn a little more about her, please visit:
http://home.comcast.net/~bemmmartin/
index.html

To see our blog, please visit: http://moomiesandmelonwater.blogspot.com

And now, we are starting the journey once again! Our daughter and Mollianne’s mei mei (little sister), Meisey Faith, is in China waiting for us to bring her home. Mollianne is excited about being a big sister and talks about Meisey all the time. She especially loves to look at the planes in the sky and say, “We are going on a plane to China to get Meisey!” We are so honored to have this wonderful blessing from China and can’t wait to meet our new blessing!

We are currently waiting on our fingerprint appointment from the CIS. Everything else is ready to go! We will hopefully have everything to China by the end of the year. And if everything goes according to plan, we will be back in China next Fall to bring Meisey Faith home!

Here are a couple of new photos of Mollianne which we thought you would enjoy. Bob carved the pumpkin!

The next picture of Mollianne looking up at the snow was taken at a local mall when she was having her picture made with Santa. They had this whole deal where you walked through and saw snowglobes that had scenes from “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” in them (they were enormous – as you can see in the following photo) and right before you get to Santa, you actually go into a snowglobe and it snows on you. It was amazing and Mollianne loved it.