We're Home

We're finally home. We are all tired but doing good. The flight was very long. Garrett did pretty good the first half of the flight. The last half he was just not a happy camper.
Garrett is doing good. He is still very much on Korea time and so are we. Hopefully we'll get on a better schedule soon. He misses his foster mom very much.
Just wanted to share a few photos. The fist one is of our first meeting. We put him to sleep. The second is of our second meeting. We got to bring him up to our room for 30 minutes. The last two were taken at Seoul's airport. "Air Plane day"

Enjoy! I'll post some more pictures of our time in Korea when I get some more sleep.

 

 

 

 

Final Day in Korea

Today is our final day in Korea. We are heading out to Korean War Memorial today and making one last stop at one of the markets. Foster mom gave us a Hanbok but it a size 2 and really big. We're going to see if we can find a size 1 so he can wear it on his first birthday.

We will have to be back here by 3:00. We have a couple more meeting this afternoon then we get Garrett at 5:00. It going to be a long 48 hours.

We are looking forward to coming home.

We'll update again when we arrive home.

Yummy!

We're getting closer to the end of our stay here in Korea. Last night(Tuesday) we went to a restaurant called bulgogi brothers. Oh my gosh that was sooooo good. I could have ate the kimichi and all the food all night. When we get home I will post pictures of our Korean meals.

We have only ate one Korean meal that we were not fond of. It was at one of the markets in one of the back alleys. It was way to hot and everything tasted the same. Other then that the food has been amazing. We had some really yummy Korean food for lunch with the DR Kims on Tuesday too. Every once in a while you need a little break. The American food has been really good too.

We are enjoying our time here in Korea. We have experienced soo much. Seoul can teach you alot. It has been an amazing experience. We are soo happy to experience Garrett's birth country. We will beable to share many things with him as he gets older. We look forward to bringing him back here in the future.

Tomorrow at 5:00 will be a very emotional day for all.

Second Meeting

It's official. Garrett will be placed in our arms forever Wed at 5:00 pm Korea time. We will have Garrett over night. Thursday morning at 8:30 am we will head to the airport.

We will have to stay at the guest house wed from 5:00 until the next morning. We can not leave the agency. We are sooo excited for him to get used to us before the long flight home.

Today was a busy day. We went to grab some breakfast before all our meetings started. We found out nothing in Korea opens until 9:00 for breakfast even during the week.Odd huh? We hung out and then ate some amazing pastries. Yummy!

We headed back to the agency met with the doctor Kims's. Very neat guy. So is his daughter the other Dr Kim. He meets all of the adoptive families. He is the founder of eastern. He is over 90 years old.

We then ate A traditional Korean meal with the Dr Kims's and all the other adoptive families here this week. Very good food.

The best part of the day was seeing Garrett again. He is such a good baby. We got to bring him up to our room and play for a little bit. He defiantly likes to be held alot.
As soon as you put him the carrier he goes right to sleep. I'm hoping that if we keep him in the carrier on the flight he will sleep most of the time. We do have bulk head seat and a bassinet seat for our flight from Seoul to Chicago. So that will be nice.

We're heading out to dinner in a bit. We have a free day tomorrow. We're going to do some more site seeing. Wed we will stick close to the agency and get all packed up so we can be ready for when we get Garrett on Wed evening.

That all for now.

Easter in Korea

One more day closer to having Garrett in our arms forever.


What a weekend it has been. I'm about to head up to go to sleep but I thought I'd write about our day.

We have had a Marathon weekend of shopping all the markets. Stacy,Brandon, Mike and I have been running all around Seoul. Even in the rain. It rained all day in Seoul today. We had to buy umbrellas. We have got many gifts for Garrett for future birthdays. We had to get all our shopping done Saturday and Sunday. Monday we have agency business most of the day. We meet with the Dr Kim's on Monday morning. Then everyone in the guest house has lunch with him tomorrow. Then the best part. We get to see Garrett again tomorrow. At that time foster mom and Garrett's social worker will decided if we will get him on Wed night Or thur morning when we leave. We are hoping that foster mom will decide to let us have him forever on wed. We will see. We understand if she chooses not to though. It would be nice if we got him Wed so he get a little more time to get use to us before getting on the plane.

One funny thing happened to us going into the subway this morning. As we were walking down the stairs all these kids came running up to us saying "Happy Easter" they were handing these bags out to everyone. We took the bags and were waiting for the subway.
We were all wondering what was in the bag. We all sat down waiting for the subway train. We each got 2 bags. A couple of them were hard and a couple if then were squishy. A little while went by and Stacy smelled it. She said. It smells like eggs. We're like Huh? We opened them up and they were hard boiled eggs some were just Little smashed. No we did not eat them. We pitched them. Lucky we checked or we would of had rotting eggs:-) We just thought it was a fun Korean Memento we would save for our kids. Hee hee.

Mike and I have decided our noses are burnt up. Some of the smells here are crazy. It burns your nose. Especially in the markets some of those smells take your breath away.

One more thing. Mike and I have been eating Korean food in Minnesota for several months now. No amount of eating Korean food will prepare you for eating Korean food in Seoul. We have been eating Korean for lunch and American for dinner. Tonight was Tony Roma's. The burger and fries were heavenly:-)



I'll post more when we see Garrett again.

4:00 am and nothing to do!

We'll it 4:00 in the morning Saturday here in Korea. 2:00 your time. I'm wide awake. Mike of course is sleeping like a champ. Lucky him. I'm sure by the time we're suppose to come home I'll finally be on their schedule.

Yesterday we ate at this neat Korean restaurant in the Hyundai Mall with a couple of other couples. I have to tell you I had all the Koreans laughing at me, The waitress was cooking a big hotpot of food I can't remember the name. We just pointed at pictures because they could not understand us. It was family style and it was a little bit of beef and lot of vegetables. I think we ate and entire garden and 3 hours later we were starving. Ok here is the funny part. We ate with medal chopsticks. I was having a very hard time. Then all of a sudden the waitress comes over and took the chopsticks away and gave me anew pair. I was eating with the wrong end of the chop sticks. I was eating with the flat part. Then to top it all off 5 minutes later she come back and is saying poke it? Poke it? I had no idea what she was talking about. She went away and came back with a fork. I of course was bound to eat Korean style. So instead of using the fork I poked it with my chop stick :-) I had one whole side of the restaurant laughing and showing me from their table how to hold the chopsticks. I will add there was one other person in our group that got laughed at too. It was fun. We got pictures.

We're heading to the Korean Folk village this morning. I'm on a mission to find a Podagi. Joon loves to be carried on Foster mom back it's not a cute looking thing. I think I'll just be using it at home to comfort him. Also to find name scrolls. Have to get Garrett's birthname done

The Foster mom's are so amazing how the hoist up the children on their back and off they go. I think I won't be trying that unless mike is around. He probably slide off my back.


Ok enough rambling I'll write more later

We're in Korea

Hi everyone

We arrived. We have had a full first business day. We met Joon today at 10:00. It was soo amazing.
He is soo cute. He feel a sleep in my arms when we were suppose to be playing with him.

We will see him again on Monday. We may get him the night before we leave instead of the morning of. We just have to stay at the guest house and not leave. We aren't quite prepared for that so we're going to have to get a few things. It really up to foster mom. She may decide to keep until morning. It was so amazing to meet her. She is soo sweet. Joon is very bonded to her. The day we get him forever is going to be a hard day for all.

We did some site seeing today after are meeting with Joon. We went to lunch with a couple of other families. It was really yummy. We also went and saw a palace.

Seoul is really an amazing place.

I'm really tired so I'll write more later

All Packed.. Ready to go..

We're all packed and ready to go. Just have to drop the dogs off.

Mike and I are staying at the guest house. That is a relief. When it's 3am in Korea and we can't sleep we can go down and rock and feed the babies in the agency hospital. This is the place the babies go before they are placed in foster homes.

It will be nice to see how Garrett's first days were before he was placed with his foster mom.


I'm not excited about our itinerary. We have to pray we are not delayed out of MSP. We leave at 9:00 and are suppose to arrive in Chicago at 10:21, We have to get from terminal 1 all the way to terminal 5 via them. Our flight for Korea leaves at 12:30.
We have heard from other families that we maybe running through the airport.

The nice part is we are not the only CHSFS family traveling this itinerary. The other family that got their travel call yesterday will be on the same flight. We won't see them on the way back though. They are leaving the day before us.

This will probably be my last post until we arrive in Korea.

We are leaving as 2 and coming back as a family of 3.

Thanks so much everyone for your prayers love and support.

We'll post more when we get to Korea.

Travel Call

Yahoo!

We received our Travel Call at 8:00 this morning. We're going to meet our baby boy. We hope to leave on Wed.

I'll post more details when we have our flights booked.

UPDATE:

Our flight is booked. We leave on Wed at 9:30 am to Chicago then on Seoul. Chicago to seoul will be 15 hours. We will arrive in Seoul at 4:30 on Thursday

We will be leaving seoul on Thur march 27 at 11:30 am and will arrive back in MSP on the 27th at 2:39 PM gotta love the time change.

We hope to be staying at the guest house and update everyone while we are there. We will find out tonight. There we're only 2 rooms left. I'm not sure how many travel calls went out today. I only know of one other one.

Check back

New Week!

We're starting a new week. Yahoo! Mike and I cleaned the house some more and hung Garrett's name that I painted in his room. Washed more laundry. I'm on call this weekend so we didn't want to go to far from home.

We did hear of another family getting their travel call on Friday at 5:45 in the morning. That is a step in the right direction. We have to be getting closer. I hope when our agency checks their email on Sunday night/Monday morning our travel call will be sitting there.

I hope we will be in Korea yet this week. It would be really neat to spend Easter in Seoul. If we get called Sunday or Monday we hope to leave on Wednesday.

Gimpy!

We'll it mid week and no call. At this point we just are in the dark. We have no idea when we are going to get the call. It could be tonight or 2 weeks from now.

Apparently we are not part of the normal trend. Get visa and then get travel call a few days later. I know it's coming I'm just getting a bit impatient.

There are many reason why a travel call can be delayed. If Garrett has a cough or a runny nose they won't release him for travel. Which is very understandable. That a long flight to not feel well. I just wish there was a little more communication on what is going on over there.

I am finding comfort in knowing that a few of the other families that had a visa interview on 3-6 have not gotten travel calls yet either. Makes me think Garrett is just fine and there are just other delays on their end.

Garrett turns 9 months old tomorrow. He should have his well baby check this week. Maybe that is what they are waiting for. I hope we get a written update on him soon.
It would make this very hard wait a little bit easier.

Keep checking back.. I post our travel call here when we get it.

Still Waiting :-(

No Travel call today :-(

This is sooo nerve racking. The only thing between us and getting on a plane to Korea is a simple email and a phone call.
I called the DC today to make sure Garrett's Visa was indeed issued. It was issued on the 6th. The operator was sooo nice. She could see Garrett's visa picture. She said he is sooo cute and his hair was standing straight up. Oh I wish I could see the picture :-(

On the bright side there was two families that got their calls Sunday evening. The Staff at our agency is so great. They could have made them wait until Monday morning. So there is someone who watches for travel calls in the evening while we are about to go to sleep and Korea is just starting their day. So it give me hope there is movement. It is so exciting to hear families getting their travel calls. Some have been waiting since Sept. They had their Visa interviews the same day. We have to be getting close.

More later

Visa Interview..

I just got word! Garrett has his visa interview 3-6-08 at 1:00. With in 24-48 hours how Visa should be issued. I would say any where from tomorrow morning to beginning of next we should receive our travel call. If we get it tomorrow we would try and leave on Sunday.

I'll keep everyone posted.

Annette

New Picture

We'll I was having a bad day. I called DC a day early and we still don't have a visa interview yet. Curiosity got the best of me. I'll check tomorrow. I have my fingers crossed. Korea should just be waking up. Hopefully they get our packet sent back soon and interview scheduled. Lets hope Wed in Korea is a good day while we are fast a sleep.

At about 12:00 today I got the most amazing photo in my email. We got a current Photo of Garrett. He is sooo Cute and getting sooo Big. We don't have a written update yet. We were told a written update is coming. I can't wait to hear how big he is. But comparing his 5 month red chair picture and 8 month red chair picture his head is above the top of the chair. I will be really interested to see how big that chair really is in person. We can't wait to get to Korea and meet Joon(Korean name) and Foster mom. It's going to be a trip of a life time.

I wish I could post a picture here But since it not really a private blog I hold off a bit. I'll wait until we get him home or post pictures while we are in Korea.

We will hopefully be able to Blog while we are there.

Check back for the latest