Beautiful Seoul Project : Time Lapse in Seoul 2011

Oh my goodness! Check out this beautiful video of Seoul! I can't wait to travel!!! This video gave me goosebumps and makes me feel very sentimental! This is on a mommy's blog who is also adopting from South Korea, and I also have to share that our sweet babies also have the same birthday. :0)

Seoul Time Lapse 2011 from Oh Choong Young on Vimeo.

Care Package #1

Tomorrow we are sending our first care package to Korea for Baby Parker. It was fun picking out items to send to him and his foster parents. The care package includes:

-Teething Toy, since his last well baby check said he has 2 teeth and we're pretty sure more are on their way

-Baby Snoopy

-Baby Soft Photo Album

-Blanket

-3 outfits...I'm curious if they are the right size....I know you go by the labels and the baby's height and weight However, it is a tad confusing when different stores have different a different height and weight for a different size...hopefully we'll get a picture and we'll see if we were right, LOL!

-Vitamins for his Foster Parents

-Chocolate for his Foster Parents

I know one question that is on people's minds is do we have a name picked out...and seriously we really don't. We've discussed quite a few names. However, we can't seem to agree on one. We plan on having a name picked out by his birthday...so that gives us another 3 months to find the perfect name for our baby boy.

Happy 10th Anniversary!!!

10 years and going strong!

Introducing-Baby Parker

Here he is!!! It's Baby Parker. Don't worry his first name is not Baby or Parker, but we really are stuck on names, so you're going to have to wait a little bit longer.

Our sweet baby boy was born on September 24, 2010 weighing 7.7 pounds. His 8 month baby check says he is now 29.9 inches and weighs 22 pounds, so it looks like he's definitely growing. Not having a clue how big that is I took a look at some baby clothes the other day and it looks like he's wearing 18 month clothes. It will be interesting to see if his growth pattern continues like it is, or if it will taper off. My mom said at one point she thought I was going to be really tall, and as you know I am only 5' 2, LOL.

And now we wait...hopefully the wait won't seem soooo long, but I'm sure as time passes we will become more and more anxious. We've already started putting together a care package to send over to Korea. This weekend we will be going to some adoption training which is provided by our social services agency. I'm interested to see if there will be any other families that are also adopting from Korea at the training.

Have a great weekend!!!
Love,
Jen & Matt

Acceptance Paperwork-Check!

Yesterday was amazing and crazy! I am totally ready to take a mega nap today, but I'll write this post first. ;-)

I got to have an amazing lunch with a fellow Korean adoptee, who is also adopting from Korea. We went to a wonderful Korean restaurant, which I know I'll visit again and the best part of course, was just talking, and talking, and talking some more... 3 hours later, I think the only reason we stopped talking was because we both noticed we had missed calls from our adoption agency that we're using, as well as emails from the agency.

And...you guessed it both of our emails had our acceptance paperwork packets in them! So last night and this morning all of us have been busting through the paperwork so our agency gets it by tomorrow morning. Let me tell you, my eyes feel like they are going to pop out of my head and they are really tired. Hopefully we filled everything out correctly. I'm pretty confident we did on some of the forms, but on the government ones...I'm going to be biting my nails waiting to hear back from the agency.

The best part about both my friend and I getting our acceptance paperwork together and mailing it in on the same day is that we should be traveling together!!! That would make the trip even more special than it already will be!!!

Okay, so we know you're waiting for a picture and we can't wait to share. However, the acceptance paperwork needs to be on it's way to Korea. So, like a lot of things with adoption I'll say that the wait should only be about 1 or 2 weeks before you will get to see a pic. :0)

June 9th, Part 2--- IT'S A BOY!!!!

Yes friends, it is hard to believe that we are announcing we already have a referral for a sweet baby boy! And again, this happened on a date, that somewhat had significance to me. On Thursday I was at the district's TECH Camp helping teach the last class I would teach as my current role as a CIT. If you haven't seen my previous post, I will be going back into the classroom next year. So in a way I was considering it "my last day on the job." Well, since I was the "driver" I didn't think it would hurt to have my cell phone out on silent. At 3:15 I saw my phone light up with an Austin area code. And I thought, could it really be possible?!?! Could we already be getting a referral?!?!? And to my great surprise, it was!!!!

To say it is unbelievable is an understatement. It is surreal to think we have a baby waiting for us in Korea. :0)

Now, we know that you're wondering do we have a name, not yet. We're still considering...

Of course you are probably curious about a picture and more info about our "big" bundle of joy. However, you're going to have to wait until our acceptance paperwork is off to Korea. Hopefully you will not have to wait longer than a week!

Seriously folks, this time when I say we are going to have to wait for awhile I am totally serious. I know everytime I say we're going to have to wait, we turn around and BAM we're announcing something new. But really due to the Emigration Permit process we don't think we will be traveling until 2012. (Some agencies have already run out for the year)

Granted, we never know...obviously we've been wrong quite a bit this year! :0)

Thanks for all of the love and support!

i600a-check!

I guess we didn't have to wait until our anniversary or the 4th of July! We received our approval letter in the mail today! It was a very nice surprise! So we're on to referral, which is when we get matched with a baby!

Other than that, summer vacation has started and if you've looked at the weather reports you know that it is HOT, HOT, HOT in Texas.

A Great Visit with Great Friends

Tonight we had some special visitors at the Parker Household. That's right, friends of ours from college came to visit! It's hard to believe we're old enough to have known each other for 17 years. Boy, I hope that the math is wrong. We met our freshman year in college, and I actually double checked my work and it has been 17 years. Crazy...essentially we've known each other half our lives. Sean competes internationally in the Scottish Highland Games and he was in the Texas Scottish Festival last weekend. Unfortunately, we didn't get to watch him compete, but we hope to in the near future. Luckily for us they continued to drive south so we got to see them! Okay, I am still dwelling on how long we have known each other. I don't think I can get past that number. Well, all I can say is we look forward to adding even more years to this special friendship.

I'm sure you're wondering if anything has happened with the adoption process. And...nope, we are still waiting for a form to be approved by the government. I think I mentioned before how a lot of things have been approved around a holiday or significant date for us. So, maybe we'll see some movement around our anniversary or the 4th of July...of course if it's sooner than that, we will not complain.

We hope you're enjoying your summer and if you could send some rain or cooler weather to us, we would appreciate it! :-)