Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Happy 7th Gotcha day to Kylan


This was the very first time I met Kylan. He was not a happy boy and was scared of me. I only had 1 hour with him that first day and he cried for about 45 min of it.



This was pure bliss...holding my son for the VERY first time. I had been dreaming about this day for months and months. After so much paperwork, days of crying and praying for this child the day had finally arrived!


Yes, he finally calmed down enough so I could hold him!




This is the board with the babies names that are leaving Korea
Kylan's foster mom saying goodbye to him. It was really hard on her to let him go and she cried a lot. We are very thankful that she took such great care of him while he was waiting for us to finish up all of the red tape (Paperwork).


The moment he was placed in my arms before we were leaving Korea. This was his "Gotcha" moment for me. This is what I think of on his special day. Yes, I am crying...notice the time 12:35pm in Korea. We arrived home the same day but it was actually about 30 hrs later due to travel and time changes and crossing the International date line and everything


Now, I am not crying just happy that he's finally in my arms and we are leaving for the US pretty soon!





Kylan in his white hanbok that we bought for Connie and Brian's wedding








Kevin and Makenzie dropping me off at the airport for my journey to South Korea to pick up Kylan and work for 2 weeks on a MOMs mission trip with Dillon International









7 years ago today I woke up in Seoul, South Korea anticipating the moment when Kylan's foster mom would place my son in my arms and I would be able to get on an airplane and bring him home to meet his daddy and sister and the rest of our friends and family for the very first time. The moment he was placed in my arms was a feeling that I will NEVER forget, it was such a miracle adoption and when the moment that we had been dreaming of had finally arrived I was overcome with joy, and just started crying and thanking God for this little miracle boy.
This is such a happy day for us but I have noticed that the older my kids have gotten the more questions they seem to have on their gotcha day. I know it's a happy day for them as well but in some ways they seem a little sad too. I just pray that we can answer all of their questions to the best of our ability and that Kevin and I are sensitive to their inquisitiveness about their adoptions, foster families and especially about their birth family and the reasons that they were not able to stay in Korea. We do try to teach them as much about Korean culture as possible and they go to a Korean culture camp every summer (which they LOVE). They learn Korean songs, dances, Tae Kwon Do, Korean games, how to eat with chopsticks, Korean food and many other things plus they built friendships with other children that were adopted from S. Korea. Every time we pick them up at camp and I look out across a sea of black haired children I am thrilled that our adoption agency has this opportunity for our children. They come home talking about how all the kids at camp look similar to them and I can see that this excites them and makes them happy. OK is not a very multi-cultural state so when the kids see other Asians they always ask me if they are Korean too and I wonder if it bothers them that in most of our groups (except our adoption friends) they are the only ones that are not Caucasian.

If you have questions about International adoption please click here. To read what I wrote about Kylan's 6th gotcha day in 2008 and read about the other end of the trip which was the arrival in OK click here.











For more info on Korea go to Seoul.net

Monday, March 30, 2009

Our snowman!
















Yesterday after church we came home, had some lunch and then ran outside to make a snowman and have a snowball fight before all the snow melted away...it was almost 60 degrees so it was melting quickly!





Kenzie's dance competition

The road conditions were horrible!



The crew


Makenzie


The girls did really well in this competition they took the High Gold trophy. We are so proud of them for working so hard. Here are a couple of pics that I took and a couple are courtesy of another dance mom named Elizabeth. It took us almost an hour just to get to the comp. due to the snowy weather and we were stopped on the highway for around 20 min. because some of the cars couldn't make it up the hill. 6-8" of snow is a lot for our area...we usually only get ice!





Saturday, March 28, 2009

John 3:16 Mission

Last Friday night we went with friends and volunteered at the John 3:16 mission. It was such an eye opening experience. To read more about click here because my friend that we volunteered with told about it better then I ever could.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Homeschoolers in the news!

Our local newspaper did a story on the homeschooling community in our area and OK in general. Teresa Poore is the leader of the homeschool group that the kids and I are involved in. While most of the article was true Teresa Poore did tell me that they twisted some of her words around to make it fit the story so she is sending something in and hoping that they will publish it.
Click here to read more!

Another mom that is a homeschool veteran has posted some comments regarding the article and I thought they were very succinct and insightful. So, to take a look at Cindy's blog click here. She has a wealth of knowledge and is very helpful for homeschool families in our area so be sure to bookmark her blog!

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Posts

Just wanted to let all of my readers know that I will only be posting ramdomly for a while due to the fact that I need to spend more time focusing on my children. I will continue to read your blogs and follow along with your lives though!

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Birthday wishes

Today is my 36th birthday and I have the funniest little story to tell. Kevin told the kids that now we are both 36 yrs old (until next month when he turns 37). Our son Kylan says in his sweet little boy voice, "Daddy, I thought you were 54!" I was laughing so hard because of the look on Kevins face! Kids really have no concept of age in adults. When I was little I thought my Grandparents were always 50 because that seemed so "old" to me but now that I'm getting closer to 50 it doesn't seem quite that old anymore.

The Flirtation Experiment-book review and giveaway

About the authors:  Lisa Jacobson  is an author, a podcaster, and the founder of Club31Women.com, an online community of Christian women aut...