Ziploc for Drew

So our agency sent out an email not long ago telling us to get a one gallon ziplock bag and fill it with gifts to give to Drew while wait. Fun huh? Over the last week I have been getting my little goodies ready (and having a total ball in the process...I LOVE baby stuff!). Well, the other night I started to pack it all in when I realized this was not going to be a easy assignment, and if I wanted it all to fit I better get creative! The first attempt I thought I was good, then I tried to zip it up...lets just say I ended up tearing the plastic at the top pretty badly. Chad walked in and with his best manly voice offered to help the lil' lady out...sure enough, he got it all in there....and it zipped up! I grabbed my camera because I KNEW this would be blog worthy. I took a picture of all the stuff laying out and then another of it all in there. Well today I downloaded all my pictures and what the?! The ziploc pics were gone. I later found out that Malia wanted to "look" at my pictures on my camera and well, I guess she got a bit over zealous and deleted them...wah! She felt bad and I felt bad...it was just a pity party, let me tell you!
So since I don't have the actual picture, here are the actual items we sent:

Last minute, we decided to use our family pictures instead though

Won't he look too cute in this with his amazing brown eyes? :-)

Ok...no this ISN'T for Drew (although, I have been known to make Malia a cup of joe on occasion), this is for Drew's foster mother. Instant coffee is surprisingly popular so I threw some in for her!

This too is for Drew's foster mother...thought it would go nicely with the coffee.

And lastly, we sent him a Nana made baby pillow. Unfortunately, this was a rare, one of a kind so I'll just say it was adorable and I hope he likes it!

We have no new news on the paperwork process front. Every time the phone rings my heart skips a beat. I know my travel call is still a few weeks away, but I still jump non the less. We are all so pumped and ready, already!

NVC logged in & OUT and another month older...

I called the NVC (the national visa center) and found out that our I-600 was logged in on 9/23 and logged back out on 9/25! This is great news because now all of the paperwork needed to issue a visa for Drew is headed to the embassy in Korea as of yesterday! Woohoo...more progress!

Right now we are still waiting on the emigration permission and a Korean passport to be issued. Once we have have that then they will issue visa approval and subsequently, give us our TRAVEL CALL!!!

Today Drew turned 8 months old. We are praying we'll be there in Korea to hold him before he turns another month older...
I'm really trying to be upbeat about it, I am praying that Drew Do Hyeon is soaking up his last month in Korea and enjoying all of the love and care his foster mother is giving.

Drew...it won't be long now before we'll all be together! We can't wait!!

My sweet girl is 7

Today we had no choice but to let Miss M turn another year older...ugh! I know I say this every year but, please, can someone please stop the clock already?! I swear she grows just to spite me! :-) Oh my goodness, this little girl brings us so much joy, and so many laughs, and ok, a few gray hairs and one or two lovely wrinkles...but they are worth it!

We love you, Angel.

Malia enjoying her favorite...Korean food!

Malia HAD to have a camp rock cake...we don't even have the Disney channel so what is up with that?! It turned out cute though!

Cole and his hidden talent...

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Fun video of Cole singing his heart out with his cousin, Caleb.

Caught!

CIMG5645
Originally uploaded by MC2412

Last night, once the kids were down and all was quiet I decided to check on them one last time before I went to bed, as I got closer I saw a light illuminating under the closet door...and this is what I find. Malia and Cole's very own book club! I quick grabbed my camera and caught them in the act! Here's Cole...I couldn't get Malia because she was behind the closet door :-).

Abundance is....watching your children find friendship in the late hours of the night.

Progress!

We got some super great news from our adoption agency last week.  We received I-600 approval from our local USCIS office to bring Drew home!  Now all we need is emigration permission (this is permission for Drew to leave Korea), Korean Passport (official paperwork so he can leave Korea), Visa approval (permission from our government for Drew to come home) and lastly, Travel clearance....(the call that sets us in motion to make flight arrangements to travel to Korea!).  So...we still have a few more things to check off of our list, but things ARE moving and Drew really IS coming home!!!!  Woohoo!

We also had a great weekend.  We held a garage sale to help raise $ for our adoption fund.  We were concerned about the rains from Ike, but God was gracious and would not let it rain on our sale.  We made over $600 so we were thrilled  (I've never made that much at a sale in my life!)

We also met some amazing people and now I just want to throw a garage sale every year just to meet these people.  Everyone has a story.  Thank you to everyone who donated items for our sale.  We could not have been so successful without you...& your stuff! :-)

I also was blessed to celebrate my birthday with my family.  There is nothing better.  

My handsome nephew Hayden, my mom, and my sweet Cole

Me and my huggable nephew Jaymin

Me and Princess Malia

Me and Cole hugging it up at Outback

I Rock?!

I want to thank my good friend AVTcoach for honoring me with a wonderful blogger award! 

My friend, I'm not sure I rock, but if I remotely resemble someone who does..I think I owe YOU some of the credit!

You see, for those of you who aren't aware, my sweet baby girl Malia was diagnosed at 2 1/2 years old with a a severe hearing loss.  With that dx, I was, in a word...shellshocked.  I remember coming home that spring afternoon and just lying across my bed sobbing as if the world was about to come to an end.  All the dreams, hopes, and preconceived plans I had for her were dashed in an instant.  The weeks following our heart wrenching news were a blur.  Oh yeah, sure, I went through the motions.  Took Miss M to get earmolds for those ugly hearing aids, smiled my best fake smile when everyone around me told me how great things were going to be..yada, yada, yada.

Once we got the hearing aids we then had to set up therapy.  Yeah.  I remember that day driving to her first appointment thinking, Ok, I'll drop her off, go grab a treat at Walgreen's then sit in my car and wait until her therapy was over.  We walk in and make our introductions with Malia's speech therapist.  I keep waiting for that pause in conversation where she says "ok, thanks mom...we'll be done in an hour" but instead I pull up a chair and our new therapist puts me to work!  Say what?!  That was the day I woke up and and everything started to come into focus.  It was gonna be a joint effort to get Malia to speak and listen and there were no views from the cheap seats to sit in on this ride!  I remember that first visit feeling very intrusive. Who WAS this woman to ask such nosey questions, I thought to myself.  

Well, 4 plus years later let me tell you who THIS woman IS....she is the one person who helped me plant my feet firmly and gave me hope that Malia can do amazing things, but she needs my help.  And not just for an hour at therapy once a week.  Every mundane detail of our lives were going to be put under a microscope and brought into focus for the sole purpose of getting language into my daughters veins.  This woman helped me see when hearing aids weren't working well enough and explained that if I truly wanted Malia to mainstream with her peers, our only option were cochlear implants.  She sat on the phone with me while I cried my eyes out when I realized she was right.  She has held my hand every step of the way and even though Malia has "graduated" from her speech sessions, she still checks in on us and wants to know where and how she can help.  

W - Thank you for your professionalism, thank you for your sincerity, and thank you for being bold enough to get us here.  You were so right about Malia.  She is a treasure and we marvel how we got so lucky.

Now...I'm suppose to award someone else...but after this long post how can I??  W- YOU ROCK...PERIOD!

Let's go fly a kite...

Let's go fly a kite...
Originally uploaded by MC2412

Today Malia and I decided to take our homeschool lesson outdoors. We were finishing up our reading when Malia said "Mom, today is a great day to fly a kite, huh?" Without a moments hesitation or excuse on my lips I hurried to the garage to grab the ONE intact kite we had and we took off....I forgot how fun it is to fly a kite, when it actually flies!

Watching your kids enjoy the wonder of a kite taking flight...it's like hot biscuits and honey for the soul!

We are so blessed

Tonight, I had a few moments looking and reading different blogs from all over. I ran across another adoptive mom's blog and she had written something that truly touched my heart. There are times in my day where it could be easy to forget how truly blessed I am...what with all the drama with a soon to be 7 year old girl, dirty laundry piled up, a 3 year old who begs for someone (anybody!) to play tanks with him on the Wii play, and of course all the cab service getting the kids to one play group or practice.
The fact that I have these two precious gifts calling me their mommy is humbling. Thanks to Brenna Rhodes for summing up my feelings exactly!


We Are So Blessed
by Brenna Fay Rhodes
copyright 1997

We are so blessed. We have the opportunity to pray and wait and plan and hope and dream and work for our child. Circumstances don't allow us to take our child for granted ~ ever. We do all these things for so long and at such great emotional cost, that when our child is finally in our arms, we truly cherish every minute. Every second.

We are blessed to be in our child's life. We are blessed that God planned for us to be a family, and that we were given the opportunities that brought us together. We get to see all the best parts of mankind in our wonderful children. All the goodness and potential and innocence and ambition and confidence and love. And what a beautiful sight that is.

We are blessed to have run this race. It is long, and very often it is practically impossible to complete. But we run anyway, and believe in ourselves and our child enough to the do the impossible. We run, knowing that at the end of this great race, a child is waiting for a chance at a wonderful life. And we get to be the ones to give him that life. Wow.

We are blessed that when our child laughs, we are the ones to hear it. And when our child cries, we are the ones she looks for. When our child feels pain or joy or accomplishment or excitement, he shares it with us. We are needed and wanted. And we are blessed.

We are so blessed to have had the chance to see life from a different angle. To see that things don't always go as you planned them out in 5th grade ~ because there are better things in store. To be part of the few who feel constantly misunderstood. To be the one always on guard against the rude or ignorant comment. To feel the frustration of not having the perfect comeback to that comment until three hours later. Our kids can use those experiences and lessons we have learned. We are deeper, stronger, more compassionate people because of this journey. And the world our children live in is better, because we grow in those ways.

Our child is blessed. He is patted and hugged and nestled and rocked and kissed and squeezed and taught and tickled and corrected and praised. He is told he is precious in God's eyes. She is certain of her value in our eyes. And she never wonders if she will be cared for tomorrow or the next day. She sleeps comfortably at night, safe in our care.

We should tell our children we are proud. We saved and scrimped, prayed and begged, planned and schemed, worked and worried. We hoped endlessly for them. We dedicated years of our lives to finding them, followed God's path to them, waited in His time for them, then brought them home to their forever family. We gave our whole hearts to our child, even before we ever saw his precious face. Now that is love. And parents who adopt know all about that.