We Arrived

It only took 24 hours but we made it. We left our house at 4:00am Wed morning and got here at 5:00am US time on Thur. We flew thru San Francisco this time since Chicago wasn't available. It was horrible. Now it 3:30 am and the jet lag has me in the computer room. Uggh. We meet Min Jee at 11:00 here in Seoul, Just a few more hours. Can't wait. I'll update more after our first meeting.

EP Approved

It's a very Happy day!

We found out today from our Social Worker Kayla's Passport has been issued and she has permission to leave Korea. She has two final step left Embassy appearance and Visa interview. We were told it could be up to 4 weeks before we get our travel call. Some families have been traveling in 2 weeks. I guess I get to start calling the State Department to see when her Visa is issued. I so hope we get the call soon.

I can't wait to go back and see Korea. It's been 2 years!

Hope to be posting good news soon.

Kayla Turns 1!

Happy birthday Kayla!


Half way around the world our little girl turned 1. It was a bittersweet day. G and I started out the day by bringing my mom an updated photo of Kayla since she not computer savvy. Then we picked up a few more gifts for Kayla foster family in Korea. We're finally starting to check things off our never ending list. Next stop home. G and I frosted and decorated Kayla cake. We had lots of fun.






For dinner we went to Hoban and had some yummy Korean food. Every time we go there G amazes us. He just eats and eats.



We had a great day celebrating Kayla's first birthday. We just wish she was home with us. I hope she had an amazing Tol with her foster family in Korea. I hope they took lots of pictures.

One year ago today we were painting Kayla's room and we didn't even know who she was yet. Today we are celebrating her birthday and getting ready to meet her in Korea. Wow what a difference a year makes. Hang on sweet girl we're coming.

New Update

After a nice long holiday weekend I returned to work to find a brand new update on Kayla. It was a great way to get my work day stated since the morning start was not great. My alarm clock failed me this morning so my little boy woke me up at 6:15. I was already suppose to walking out the door that time. Oh well. When I sat down at my desk to catch up on email. I had 7 new photos and written update on Kayla. Here is what we learned.

* She is not a big smiler.
* Measurements:
* 6.25.2010 weight: 8.6kg height: 71cm head: 44.7cm chest: 41.2 teeth: 2/2
* She has been walking for about 10-15 days and is doing well. She walks well on her own, but if she wants to go somewhere fast, she still crawls.
* She imitates and copies Korean nursery rhymes with hand movements.
* She drinks 200cc of formula every three hours...this is more than she had been drinking.
* She also enjoys being fed banana, steamed rice, tomato....solids are primarily given as snacks. She also can hold a cracker/cookie or a piece of fruit in her hand and feeds herself.
* She likes books and looking at them, focusing on them and turning the pages.
* She really has a good attention spans and she will listen and watch when a story is read to her.
* She babbles a lot and says "umma" [Korean word for mommy], "ahppa" [Korean word for daddy], "pahp" [Korean word for steamed rice or meal/food in general]
* she claps for herself when she is praised [she did this during the meeting].
* She waved bye-bye at the end of the meeting.
* She recognizes all the family members in her foster family and when they come home from work/school, she is excited to see them and welcomes them
* She falls asleep at around 11 p.m. to midnight and she is fussy before she falls to sleep, so in order to help her fall asleep, she is held and patted or held piggyback style.
* She wakes up sometimes at 2-3:00 a.m. for a feeding.
* She wakes up for the day at 7-8:00 p.m.
* She naps twice a day for about 30 minutes-1 hour every day.

We hope our paperwork goes into the ministry very soon. Kayla will be 1 year old at the end of the month. We hope we are in Korea at the end of August.

11 Months

Kayla turns 11 months today. Wow where has the month gone? We still have not received a written update on Kayla. I was so hopeful that something would follow the pictures but nothing has shown up in our email. We are still waiting our turn in line. We are hopeful that the next batch of EP's that are submitted is big. If it's big then maybe we will be in Korea in Aug otherwise I'm guessing Sept. Kayla turns one in a month. We are sending Kayla a birthday care package with a traveling family that is waiting for their travel call. They should be getting their travel call any day now.

June was a busy month. G turned 3 on June 13th so we had a big family birthday party. Everyone feasted on burgers, brats, bulgogi and G's favorite Mandu. To top it all off we had a Thomas the tank engine cake.

Can't wait to see what July will bring.

Good week!

It has been a great week. We found out on Tuesday that a new batch of emigration permits was submitted to the Korean Ministry. This was a big batch with 14 families. These families paperwork went to Korea between mid Dec to mid Jan. This puts us just a little closer to being submitted ourselves. Our paperwork went to Korea Feb 1st. I’m crossing my fingers that we will be in the next batch submitted. I hope the next batch is just as big as the one just submitted. If we are not submitted in the next batch in July I’m guessing we will not travel until the beginning of September.

The other good news is we got updated photos of Kayla. She finally got our care package. When she was in for her 10 month well check she received it and the agency took pictures. Yay! I was so excited when mike called to tell me to check my email. I opened it up and had 3 beautiful picture of Kayla in an outfit we had sent. It was so neat to see her one of the outfits we sent. It really starts to make things feel real. I held all those things in my hands and now she has them. It really made my week. I was really starting to get down. This second adoption has been a rollercoaster. I’m ready to get off and have my baby girl home. We didn’t get any other information. I hope a written update comes in a couple of weeks.
G was so excited when he saw the pictures of his baby sister. He has been talking non-stop about Kayla. We printed out a couple of the photos and he brought them to daycare for show and tell. He is so excited to be a big brother.

But before Kayla comes home we have a big celebration on the calendar.

G is turning 3! I can’t believe it. We are having a big party with family this weekend.

10 months old

Little miss K turned 10 months old May 25th.

Miss K typical goes in for her well checks around the 25th of the month. About a week ago we asked for our first of 2 updates that we are allowed to ask for. We hope we get some new pictures and the update very soon.

We dropped off a care package for miss K shortly after we accepted our referral. It sat at the agency for about 3 months. It finally went to Korea at the beginning of May. So hopefully she got her care package when she went in for her well check on 25th.

Hoping and praying we get an update quickly. This wait is getting really hard. I can’t believe we still have a possible 3 more months to go.

We have started planning G’s 3rd birthday. I can’t believe he’s already going to be 3. We started the process for miss K when he was 18 months old. By the time she comes home it will have taken 2 years. Very different then G. From start to finalization it took 1 year. It’s crazy how things change so quickly.

Feels like a marathon.

I feel like we are running a marathon with no end in sight. We are approaching 4 months since our acceptance went to Korea. We turned in our Paperwork Jan 29th but it didn’t go to Korea until Feb 1st.

We are basically waiting in line for Kayla’s paper work to be submitted to Ministry for emigration permit (EP). EP gives Kayla permission to leave the country.
We are guessing we will be submitted in Aug and travel in Sept. I’m praying that we get submitted sooner but it does not look good.

We are keeping busy with Garrett and putting some final touches on Kayla’s room. We got a ton done this weekend. I’ll have to post pictures when we get it all put together. It may be a while though. I think we are going to wait until we get submitted for EP to finish her room. We have not had the heart to move the dogs to their new location. They are going to be very sad. Currently their beds are in Kayla’s room. They need to move downstairs. I have a feeling we are going to end up with 2 big 70+ lb dogs in our room in our bed. Oh well. It will be just like Sat/Sun mornings. Sat and Sun usually go a little something like this. G gets up and comes in our room and wakes us up. Then he goes and sees the puppies and then comes back to our room with the puppies. Before we know it we are all piled on our bed. I think we will need a bigger bed.

Since we are about half way thru our wait we asked for an update on Kayla. We hope to find out more about her development and growth and how she is adjusting to her new foster family. She had to switch families in March. Hopefully we will get an updated picture too.

Good news is Kayla should be getting her care package May 25. She goes in for her 10 month well check on or near this date. We had dropped off our care package shortly after we accepted her referral and it sat at our agency for 3 months. Care packages go with local traveling families so it took a while for it to leave the agency. I’m going to make sure I check to see if any care packages need to go when we get our travel call.

Time to bring this Blog back to life

Time to revive our blog. It hasn’t had much attention lately. We plan to update our Blog while we are in Korea. So here we go again. Hang on and enjoy following us to meet our daughter in South Korea.

On Jan 21 we got the call about a beautiful baby girl in Korea. After submitting her file to the U of M for them to check it over we accepted her referral Jan 29th. Our Official acceptance didn’t go to Korea until Feb 1st.

Fast forward a little. We are 3 ½ months into a 6-9 month wait to travel to Korea to meet our daughter.

We have named her Kayla Min Jee. Born July 25th in South Korea. I was looking at our blog to see what we were doing when Kayla was born. The day she was born I was on call. My friend had inspired me to start on Kayla’s room. So Mike and I were busy priming and painting Kayla’s room the day she was born.

The first 3 months flew by. Now it feels like time is standing still. We hope to travel in late summer early fall. The next few months we will be busy buying gifts and putting the finishing touches on her room.

Come back and check for updates. I'm sure we will be busy and more things will happen now that we are getting a little closer to traveling.