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!!!