get the ball rolling

Something (or someone) has been butting into my blogging time these days. *enter Max*

Our little package, big surprise entered our lives 2.5 weeks before "schedule". I guess he ran out of room in there. Thankfully. Or maybe he wanted to hurry up and meet his big sister Zoey. But don't we all feel that way...

Thankfully Korea has started issuing EPs for these sweet babies who are now "toddlers" so they can be united with their forever families. We are hopeful that we will be able to travel for Zoey by early summer. She continues to do well on her PKU medication and is growing like a weed according to her latest well baby check report. Unfortunately we haven't received any updated photos of her in months and it's driving me nuts. I may be overcompensating by taking ridiculous amounts of photos of Max.

The timing is ultimately in God's hands. But please continue to pray for the many families who are still waiting to bring their children home and for the transition time after that. It will be challenging but so rewarding in the end.

our 15 minutes of fame…

This past September we were photographed and interviewed for an article in Business Black Box magazine. Each issue they feature a "What Matters" human interest story about someone in the community. 

It all started when Geoff Wasserman, CEO at Showcase Marketing, along with his son, came to support us during our adoption fundraiser back in August. We shared our adoption stories with each other and as he was leaving, asked us if we would be interested in sharing our story with the community. Needless to say, it was one of the highlights of my day. *understatement* 

I am so geared up about it and hopefully it will be a great tool to encourage other families to adopt!

Click here to view the full magazine content including our article (scroll to pg 96).

happy Korean Lunar New Year!

Today officially marks the year of the dragon! Although I'm not much of a superstitious person, after doing a little research of my own and finding that "Dragons seem to be a change year, and usually from bad to good," I can only feel optimistic about Zoey's homecoming - THIS YEAR! I definitely wouldn't say that last year was a "bad" year though – after all, it was the year we started our adoption process, Zoey became our baby girl and we also received the unexpected gift of her baby bro.

So, in celebration of the lunar new year, we sent a care package to Zoey and the foster family. Hopefully we will get another group of pictures with her and the gifts! I think it was a pretty awesome package…new PJ's for Zoey, cute cat hat and mittens, an adorable Asian ballerina doll, a lullaby CD, a recordable story book that Brad and I were able to "read" to Zoey (hopefully she'll listen to it A LOT and get to know our voices), and a hard cardboard toddler book I customized with our photos, family pictures and Zoey's photos showing how she will become part of our family (my favorite part)! And as a suggestion from a friend who lives in Seoul, we sent the foster family a Yankee Candle - apparently they are hot ticket items over there and very pricey. Yay for after-Christmas sales. :)

Zoey's progress!

This week we unexpectedly received a "progress report" on Zoey from our agency! It included an entire page of info describing her development and personality, living environment and foster family and some encouraging (but also confusing) details regarding her diet and PKU diagnosis. 

I already knew it, but it sounds like Zoey is going to be the PERFECT FIT for our family. She likes watching commercials and cartoons and shows interest in computers by sneaking into the foster brother's room to turn his on. She loves toys with sound and "insists" on being handed the phone when it rings. *smile* It is clear her foster family is doing a GREAT job with her and they all LOVE her very much. It is going to be bittersweet when the day comes for us to actually travel to Korea and bring her home. WE will be the strangers/bad guys who are taking Zoey away from the family she has come to love and attach herself to over the last year of her life. Unfortunately the longer we wait and the older she becomes, the harder this transition will be. So until then, we are doing our research to prepare for this transition and learning the best ways to bond and attach with her as her FOREVER family. It's not going to be an easy process but it will all be worth it. We're up for the challenge of becoming a family of 4 with God's help!

We set up an appointment with our metabolic specialists in February to review her medical records and set up a plan for when Zoey is home with us. The confusing yet optimistic part of her "progress report" described her diet which is NO LONGER low protein as a toddler with PKU would be expected to eat. We know she was put on a medication for PKU that has the ability to allow some patients to breakdown protein more efficiently. It will be interesting to see what our specialists here have to say about putting a young toddler on this drug…even though it may make our life easier, I'm definitely not a drug pusher and realize that every drug has the potential for adverse side effects, etc. *and now stepping off my soap box* So again, time will tell…we are waiting on some clarification from Korea on her medical records and current PKU diagnosis. We are just thanking God that she is happy, above average developmentally and healthy. We love you, Zoey!

To me, this Bible verse reads more like a fortune cookie, but I love it…

As cold water 

to a weary soul, 

so is good news 

from a far country.

Proverbs 25:25 

ok, who's up for dim sum? :)

one year closer to Zoey!

Hard to believe it was a year ago that we started out on our adoption journey. 

December 25, 2011…

Hard to believe it was almost 8 months ago that we saw 

our Zoey's face for the first time.  

May 10, 2011…

Hard to believe only 7 weeks later we found out I was pregnant.

June 30, 2011…

  

Hard to believe we had to petition and wait 7 more weeks to find out we would be allowed to continue with Zoey's adoption!

August 15, 2011

Here's to a NEW YEAR and hopefully more good news soon while we

(im)patiently wait to bring Zoey and her baby brother home.

And I thought last year was busy…

that's the way we keep things exciting around here.

Zoey, Zoey, Zoey!

I was so ecstatic this week when we received NEW pictures with Zoey's well baby check report from our agency. Seriously, I can't even explain how much I love this girl! Adoption is such an amazing ride. I know I keep saying this, but I wish everyone could experience it first hand.

When we received Zoey's referral almost 7 months ago, I never would have believed all of the amazing changes and turn of events that ahead for us. First off, I never would have thought we'd still be waiting to bring our daughter home from Korea. ok, I never would have believed we would be pregnant and still waiting to bring Zoey home from Korea. I never would have believed we would sell our adorable little home in 12 days and move into a family home "fixer-upper" 3 weeks later. What can I say, God has a sense of humor…and is way better to me than I deserve.

The latest on Zoey's homecoming…don't ask, we don't know! What we DO know is that S. Korea will begin issuing EP's again in January and they will be processing families who submitted their acceptance paperwork last March. We submitted our paperwork towards the end of May, so assuming the submissions are chronological, we COULD receive Zoey's EP in March! There are a few steps that have to happen even after that, so I'm really praying the timing works out for me to get through this pregnancy, bring the li'l bro home, recover and be able to fly to Seoul with Brad to bring her home. That's my prayer and I'm sticking to it! "For nothing is impossible with God." - Luke 1:37

This face - I can't stop staring at her new pictures! But it's time to get back to Zoey's Lunar New Year/late Christmas care package. This is going to be a GOOD ONE – if I could just figure out a gift to include for her foster family. Any suggestions…? 

t-shirts and coffee for the cause of adoption!

Get a head start on your Christmas shopping and visit  

Zoey's Just Love Coffee fund raising site.

A portion of every sale through our site will be directly applied to BRINGING ZOEY HOME as well as supporting clean water projects in developing countries through the organization charity: water.

We are now saving for our travel funds to S. Korea - we can't wait to bring our Zoey girl home! (Hopefully by next spring) Thank you for helping us!

And as a side note, we are considering starting a t-shirt fundraiser…If anyone would be interested in purchasing one of our "Seoul" t-shirts, (or possibly other adoption-related t-shirts) please email me!

 

Celebrate National Adoption Month!

We never could have anticipated the huge changes coming for our family last year this time. I feel very blessed that God has chosen us to be the parents of our dear Zoey, her baby brother, and another sibling from China in the future! It's an amazing ride and I wish everyone could experience the miracle of adoption. Please consider making a difference in the life of a child!

keeping things interesting…

I can't believe Zoey is a year old and we've been waiting for her to come home for almost 5 months! We had a fun little party with a few friends and family on the 23rd (since it was actually her birthday in Korea at that time). We thought it would be fun to find out the sex of baby Searls (early) the day before the party and have a cake reveal the surprise, so thankfully, he cooperated and we were able to see the goods. Brad and I found out at the ultrasound but kept it a surprise for our party guests until we cut into the cake Friday night. But not before I doctored it up as the layers had shifted on the drive home from Strossner's and the BLUE cake was very obviously showing. Hello? That's not a surprise!

I'm so glad we got this updated picture of Zoey with her birthday gifts we sent to her along with her foster mother (sorry we aren't allowed to show her face). Come home soon, Zoey! There is going to be one more EP submission batch before the end of this year, so there is a slight chance that she could be home by Christmas. And that would be another miracle. Time is really flying by with all the changes going on in our family…

When we found out about baby brother Searls and Zoey's adoption moving forward (not to mention China baby's arrival down the road), it was obvious that we needed to do something about our living arrangements. We had enjoyed the "downtown living" for a couple years and loved it, but realistically, we needed a long-term housing situation that could accommodate a growing family. Anyone who knows us, knows that we are notorious for buying/selling houses and moving every couple of years...for the past 9 years. We think it's fun. Call us weird, but we enjoy it. Because of our good success with the flat fee MLS listing (which also saves you 3% commission, by the way) we decided to go that route again with our current house. Praise God we had a signed sales agreement in under two weeks! Incredible - especially since I didn't know how much longer I could stand the 1 hour notice for showings and getting the house all put together, cleaned up and dogs cleared out. I think we had 8 showings total before we finalized our sales agreement with the couple in France who found our house online!

Obviously, moving is a lot easier without children which is why we are looking for a house that can grow with our family. As much as I love house hunting, I think we found one already! My sister, mom and niece were in town last week and we went house hunting one day - it was actually the very first house we went through with our Realtor. We made an offer yesterday and are waiting to hear back about that…we apparently have some competition and other offers that we are up against. But either way, we will be moving somewhere in a few short weeks. Just keeping things interesting! We are really hoping this is the house for us, after all, we walked into one of the bedrooms and saw this…

…remember the plaque I bought for Zoey's room? I think it's a SIGN! literally…

what a month…!

GREAT news on our China adoption. We JUST BARELY met the deadline for sending our dossier to China. God is good and enabled us cram two months of down time (while we were petitioning for Zoey and not wanting to add another dynamic to our relationship with the adoption agency) into 2 weeks! That was a crazy couple of weeks filled with redoing paperwork, trips to Columbia, phone calls, multiple Fedex runs and making sure everything was perfect for the dossier requirements - because we only had one chance to get it right. I'm glad that part of the process is behind us. Now, we sit back and wait for baby number 3 to be announced - this could take 5 years or more unless we decide to switch over to the special needs program. Thankfully this will (likely) happen after sufficient adjustment time with Zoey and baby #2!

What else is going on in our world…as if we didn't have enough going on to keep us busy, we decided we need to sell our house and move somewhere more practical (keeping in mind that we will be a family of 5 before we know it). So we did the smart thing and entered a flat fee mls listing (hopefully saving us the 3% sellers agent commission). We staged the house, rented a wide angle lens for photography and the MLS listing went live a couple days ago. Amazingly, we had a showing yesterday and another scheduled for today. Praying we get some offers soon!

Zoey turns a year old on Saturday! First birthdays (dols) are a HUGE deal in Korea so we hope she gets an awesome party with her foster parents and/or at the agency headquarters with the other September birthday babies.

Just wish we could be there to celebrate. Hopefully we'll at least get some photos and an update soon. We love you, Zoey! We're planning a little miniature scaled get-together tomorrow for our own celebration and baby #2 gender reveal…if it decides to cooperate later today.