33 years ago...

...my family welcomed me into the world!  I was born Christmas Eve morning, so the night of the 23rd my dad had to quickly put together the table and chairs that Santa was bringing my big sister.  She obviously got to see it, but had to leave it behind because they were taking her to my grandma and aunt's house.  We can't feel too sorry for her, though, because she got to open all the gifts under their Christmas tree from their students (they were both teachers).  Plus, she got me as a little sister that Christmas!!  The best present ever, I'm sure she'd agree!...right, Brenda?!

Now, 33 years later, it's come full circle and we are both going to be first-time mamas in 2010, as well as our little sister becoming a second-time mama!  The explosion of children in our family this coming year will be amazing...only hope the grandparents can keep up with all of them, which they have assured us they will.  Get your rest now!!  It's going to be a busy year!  But the best one yet, for sure.  Can't wait!!!

More good news...

... just keeps rolling in.  I called the National Visa Center this morning and they informed me that our paperwork is being sent to the Embassy in Seoul today!!!  That means we have made it through one government's hoops and are on to the next.  We do not know how long it will take before we get the travel call, but each day is one closer to that moment.  With the delays that the agency in Seoul has been experiencing due to decreased number of emigration permits their government has been issuing, and the backlog of children to come home ahead of baby J, we just don't have an answer as far as our timeline.  But that day WILL come!!  We will continue to get ready for him to finally be part of our family and, to that effect, more good news...the stroller we ordered came in and we picked it up today!  Chris' mom bought it for us; thanks, Grandma Mary!!  We're starting to accumulate more and more baby items.  Now, if only someone would like to loan us their child to get the dogs ready for the huge change ahead!!  Any takers?!?!

Hall*mark request

As mentioned in a previous post, we recently sent a recordable storybook from Hall*mark to baby J in Korea.  I had sent a thank you email to the store, I think from the receipt you could go on-line and write a review or something like that.  Anyway, when I got home tonight, I had a personal email (not just a formatted one) from a Hall*mark public relations person from the Kansas City headquarters...they want to use our story on their 100th anniversary website coming out in January!!!  Here is an excerpt from that email:

"Your message about how the Hallmark recordable storybook will help the
little one you're adopting become acquainted with his new mom and dad from
afar, has made its way to me. Actually, it has been shared with several
employees, especially those on the creative team that came up with the
idea, and I guarantee you, it has made everyone's day here at Hallmark's
Kansas City headquarters!

I am writing to make a request.  Hallmark will mark its 100th birthday on
Jan. 10, and one of the ways we are celebrating is to develop a centennial
web site.  One of the features of the site asks people to share their
"Hallmark moment" with us.  The site launches in January but I would like
to have some Hallmark Moment stories already on the site to help people get
the idea -- and your story is one of those I'd love to be able to post."


We are both so excited about this request!!  When I sent the thank you email and explanation about the book, I had no idea that something like this would happen.  This will be a great item to put in baby J's life-book scrapbook that I am making for him (so that he can follow along on his adoption journey, bringing him home, and his early life with us).  He'll know that we are so proud of his journey to us and to be chosen as his "forever" parents.  So don't forget to go to their website after January 10 to see our "Hall*mark moment" published for the world to see!


Merry Christmas, Baby J!!!  




ps - Not sure what happened to my font size here, after pasting the excerpt from the email...gotta love technology.  ;-)

Can't sleep...

Why am I awake at 12:30 am?!?!?!?  Well, I know why I'm awake (dear hubby's noisy nose!), but I just could not get back to sleep so decided to post some pictures.  Unfortunately, I also have to work in the morning, um, in 5 hours, to be exact.  After laying in bed trying to get back to sleep, obviously with no success, I uploaded some recent pictures.

Jinx and Lexi

Jinx rarely tolerates Lexi laying so close to her when she's napping, so I could not resist this picture!  As you can tell, they are used to me snapping photos of them close up...not fazed by it at all.

Before I sent the book to J that I wrote about in an earlier post, I was trying to find the Hangul (Korean alphabet) letters for Mom and Dad to write in it.  I came across a website (Zazzle) that sells Korean items and found this shirt...I could not resist it because it's so accurate:

the extent of my modeling career!

Here's a close-up:

I love this shirt!!  I wore it today (well, yesterday now) and we were out to lunch when someone came up to us, said they had noticed my shirt, and congratulated us on our adoption!  I will probably be wearing it frequently because I have to get good use out of it and once J comes home, we won't be "expecting" him anymore.  Yeah!!  Can't come soon enough!

Well, I am going to hopefully get back to sleep now.  Another 3 hours of sleep would do me well before working a 12-hour shift.  Maybe I'll get lucky and be put on standby so I could at least sleep in some.  Sweet dreams!

8 MONTHS OLD

I need to be getting to bed after a loooong day at work and meeting with friends to celebrate a referral for one of them (yeah!), but I just wanted to say that my son is 8 months old today!!  I leave you with a few photos of what I'm going to do now:

Another gift and Christmas trimmings...

We have had a chance to send another care package over to our little boy with a family going over to Korea to meet their son...thanks Audrey!!!  I found this gift at everyone's favorite card store and could not pass up the opportunity for our J to hear our voices for months before even meeting us.  Yep, you read that right: he is going to hear us reading a story to him!  :)  It is a recordable storybook where we recorded ourselves reading the pages; when he turns the page, the new page will be read to him...by us!!!  We're hoping that in doing this, we might be more familiar to him (at least by sound) and not be quite as much strangers to him when we finally meet and bring him home.  This will hopefully allow him to feel safer with us at a time that is going to be very stressful for him.

We spent Thanksgiving weekend with my family and celebrated Christmas while we were there.  Jason even had his own stocking that was stuffed full as well as a couple of gifts that will be waiting in his room for his arrival!  What a wonderful extended family he has.  Can't wait until he is here and can rip into his own gifts, instead of Mom and Dad doing it for him!

Chris and I spent this last weekend getting our house ready for the Christmas holidays.  We bought the tree, set it up, and decorated the tree, fireplace, and house (inside and out) with lights.  I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this season (and not just because it has my birthday in it as well, but that is a bonus!).  The dogs have actually been leaving the tree alone and I have only caught Lexi drinking from the tree stand once.  Here is our relaxing experience from Sunday night.  Don't you just love the smell of fresh-cut Christmas trees and a fire crackling away?  We do!

We just found out today that the USCIS has approved our paperwork and it will be on its way to the National Visa Center (NVC) tomorrow morning.  This is the last stop in the US before it goes to Korea.  We are hoping that it will be on its way over there by Christmas...what a great gift that would be!!  Then it's more waiting while it goes through a few processes over there, but maybe things will start picking up speed in January.  We still don't know when we'll be going to get him, but every day is one closer to the three of us finally becoming a family.  These holidays are hard because we know our son is half a world away, growing up without us.  But we also know that he is being well cared for by his foster family and they will have these holidays to spend with him making their memories that will last them a lifetime.  We'll have the rest of his life to make our own memories with him.  We are sooo looking forward to that!  That first day of making memories can't come soon enough!!!