10 months old...

Ian is 10 months old today. Time flies. He is starting to get the hang of crawling, but prefers to scoot. He also loves to stand, with help. He is having a good time experiencing new foods as well. His favorites so far are steak and macaroni and cheese. He is still practicing picking up food by himself.

Ian is starting to enjoy sleeping in his crib. He has slept through most of the night the last few nights. When he does wake, he usually just needs either a diaper change or to be topped off with a bottle.

Merry Christmas

We reflect upon our Savior's birth and the long journey that Mary and Joseph took before He was born.
We spent Saturday and Sunday trying to fly out to Oregon to spend Christmas with Dana's mom and step dad, Bruce. Since we knew we wanted to spend the holidays with them and Mike and Allison and the kids, we bought tickets in April. People frequently make comments to us about always flying standby and the chances we take trying to get from one place to another, including overseas travel. While we enjoy the thrill of travel and always having a backup plan when we fly standby, there was some relief to having paid tickets, including not having to dress up for our flight. We all took the opportunity to wear jeans on the plane, a luxury we don't have flying standby. We did not get out of Milwaukee on Saturday due to fog. This is a nightmare situation for airlines to have bad weather during one of the busiest travel times of the year. Each flight that is cancelled means lost revenue for them. We were rebooked on a flight through Chicago, not our first choice but the only one we were given, for Sunday. We arrived at the airport with over an hour to spare. They were not able to give us seats together, but at least we were on time, or so we thought. We waited at the United gate and started to get nervous when we were about 20 minutes from departure time. The crew from Skywest, that was flying the United Express flight, came to the gate looking for the agent to board. They asked us to tell the agent they were ready for departure and just needed the passengers on board. Well, at departure time, the agent finally showed up and boarded. We were about 15 minutes late leaving. The captain came on and told us since we were late, we missed our landing slot into Ohare. We would have to wait 30 minutes to leave. We had a short connection in Chicago to get to our Portand flight, so we asked the flight crew 3 different times to check on our connection. No luck. We finally arrived into Ohare and no ground crew to bring us in to the gate. We finally got off the plane to discover our flight, which had already been scheduled to depart, was delayed and scheduled to leave in 5 minutes. Well, we were in concourse C and our Portland flight was in concourse B, needless to say, we did not make it. We stood in line at customer service to find out there was no other flight that we could be confirmed on. We could stand by, but the agent stated that we would likely not make any of the flights due to heavy overbooking. Being tired and frustrated, we were told our bags were in Chicago and to go to Baggage Services to get our bags. Upon arriving there, we were told that since our bags were checked through to Portland, our bags were going there without us on the next flight. So we were without a flight and without bags...and all 3 carseats! We finally made it home via bus to Milwaukee and Madison (with a carseat we had in our van thankfully). Still no word on our bags other than they arrived in Portland on Sunday. We are hoping that we will get some word on our bags and carseats soon. We are making the best of a disappointing situation. Time with our family and bonding with Ian at home.
Wishing you and your family a Merry Christmas and we look forward to seeing you in the new year!

Home for the Holidays....

We are looking forward to the possibility of traveling out tomorrow to Eugene, Oregon to see Dana's mom and step dad for Christmas. We tried to fly out of Milwaukee today, but due to fog, most of the flights were cancelled out of the Milwaukee airport, including ours. After battling the crowds and getting in line to rebook, we are now planning on leaving Sunday afternoon. Thankfully, Dana was able to take care of the rebooking while Justin drove around with 3 sleeping kids in the car. We are praying for smooth travels tomorrow and not the snow predicted that could delay or cancel us again. Who would of thought that after buying tickets we would not be able to fly????

We received a nice gift from Rosie, a co-worker of Justin, which included a Simply Said book called Congratulations on your Adoption. In it there is a nice part in it that touched us, it reads...We know at times your journey seemed long...and the wait never-ending, but when you look into your child's eyes, you know your dear one was hand-picked in heaven's timing.

We celebrate this Christmas with 3 blessings from heaven! We are thankful to God for His timing in this, though it was a tough journey, we praise Him for bringing our children into our lives.

Doctor Visit

We had a challenging time at the doctor yesterday. We arrived at Ian's first official physical with our pediatrician, Dr. Yu. Ian is very healthy and the ear infection is gone...hooray! The visit went well until we found out that he needed 2 more vaccines and a TB skin test, which is part of his routine adoption checkup. Ian just fell asleep and in came the nurse to do the TB skin test then another nurse to help with the two injections. Needless to say, we had a VERY unhappy baby. To top things off, we had to get blood drawn, 7 vials of blood, and a chest x-ray. Not a fun afternoon. Thankfully the kids were able to be at school until 3, so they did not have to be at the doctors office with us. It would have been hard to keep them occupied and happy for 2 hours.

We are settling in and getting into a little routine now. He is teething, so there is still some discomfort with that. He is enjoying having a sister and brother (at least most of the time). We are looking forward to Christmas and New Years. We hope to see family and friends over the next few weeks so that we can introduce Ian to the many people that have been praying for him.

Settling In

We're starting to settle in. Ian is sleeping during the night rather than wanting to play. Last night he slept from 8pm until 2:45pm, drank a bottle, then slept until 7am. I'm not sure he's still 100% comfortable with us, but he's adjusting well considering the upheval in the last two weeks of his life. He seems to really enjoy Ben as he smiles easily when he comes over to play with him. I also love it when he smiles when I come in the house. That's the best part of coming home from work - having the kids yell excitedly "Daddy" and then to see Ian smile at me. I know it sometimes makes Dana feel bad because she spends all day tending to them so she doesn't get the exuberant entrance. But she is a wonderful mother and the kids love and appreciate her deeply as do I.

I'm back to work full time now. Last week I worked less than 20 hours - I could get used to that, but it probably won't pay the bills. Tomorrow Ian has an "adoption checkup" doctor visit so I'll skip out of work on a long lunch for that.

Yesterday, we introduced Ian to our friends and church. Until that point, we'd stayed pretty close to home trying to give him time to get used to us.

This weekend, we're going to test that bond as we get on an airplane and head to Oregon for Christmas with Dana's parents. We bought the tickets (yes, we actually bought tickets) for the trip back in April and thought we'd have Ian home for a couple of months by this time. Oops, so much for planning in advance. Now I see there is possible snow on Saturday. We'll just take this one day at a time.

Tonight I'm working on our Christmas letter, hoping to get it out to everyone before Christmas. Thank you to everyone who has sent cards and letters and commented about the blog. We're glad you've been enjoying it.

Survival Mode

We have been in survival mode these past few days as we adjust to a new baby and readjust to the time difference. We are happy to be so tired knowing that our son is finally home with us. We are blessed to have several meals in our freezer from our friends, Kris and Jason, who dropped them off at our house while we were in Korea. Justin's parents came on Friday and have made us wonderful meals and also helped as we continue to unpack and organize. Ian continues to do well. He is such a loving little boy. He is still getting use to having a sister and a brother. Ben and Cami love to help feed him, change him, and play with him...sometimes more than Ian can handle. He is use to peace and quiet in the home of his foster parents, who were in their 60's. Having a sister and a brother is something to get use to.
The kids enjoyed having Grandma and Grandpa to play with this weekend as mom and dad tended to baby Ian and tried to get some much needed rest. They even got to open a few Christmas presents early.
As Justin's parents leave tomorrow we realize that we will be on our own tending to all 3 kids and also all of the meals, etc. We are excited to see Ian continue to adjust to us and will be excited to introduce him to all of you as we feel he is able to handle new people. We know that you will see as we do, that he is a sweet and loving little boy. We thank and praise God for this wonderful gift he has given us. He is a true blessing!

First Night At Home

We made it through our first night at home. Ian and mommy slept on and off from 1am to 3:30am. Daddy took over for a while. We had a doctor appointment at 9:45 am and woke up about 15 minutes before we had to leave. The kids were still passed out and Justin was still sleeping, so Ian and I headed to the doctor. He is in good health with the exception of an ear infection. This explains why he was still fussy during landing even while drinking his bottle. We had a casual afternoon. Mommy and Ian slept from noon until about 5, still on and off, but in longer increments. We took the kids to their swim lesson tonight. Ben LOVES going to swim. This would have been Cami's first lesson, but she fell asleep on the way and slept through the whole lesson. Oh well.
Ian had his first bath tonight. He seems to like the water. Cami helped wash him up and get him ready for bedtime. We have found that he likes vegetable baby food and Veggie Gerber Graduates crackers. He is not fond of fruit baby food. It is fun watching him try to pick up the veggie crackers and put them in his mouth. Clothes are fun. He does not fit into Ben's old winter baby clothes. He is much longer than Ben was at this age, so he is already in the 12 month clothes, unlike Ben who was in 6-9 month clothes until his first birthday. Thankfully we have a few things that we picked up before we got him to have in case.

We're Home!

We made it home to snowy Wisconsin about 11:30pm tonight. We left Seoul today, Wed, Dec. 5th at 3:15pm, so we made good time (if you call a 9.5 hour flight to LA, followed by a 7 hour layover and a 3.5 hour flight home and then a 1.5 hour drive "good time"). The whole time zone/international date line thing intrigues me, but our body clocks will be messed up for several days to come.

This morning (Wed) we went to Ben's foster mother's restaurant. It was a little further away than we thought so we got there a little later than we had hoped. It's a nice little place serving a salad bar and deep fried foods. She gave us a sampling of the food -- very good. It definitely more western than Korean. We also got to meet her sister who is her partner in the business. We may have been the first customers as no one was there when we arrived. We hope she does well.

We left a little before noon and headed back to the hotel. We missed our intended airport shuttle so we grabbed a cab and rushed to the airport. We made it to the gate with a few minutes to spare. There was a later flight, but it didn't connect with the Midwest flight coming home from LA, so we rushed to save us an extra night on the road. At that point, we were ready to get home and have Ian start adjusting to his new home.


Ian had an ok flight. He slept on and off but pretty much only in Dana's arms. He has this fussy, sad cry when he is upset. It is heartbreaking because you just feel sad for him. To this point, he doesn't seem to be a screamer like Cami so that's a big plus. Ben and Cami did wonderful on the flight again. Watching their videos and sleeping for a good portion of the flight. Ben intrigues me - we basically gave the kids free reign over the in flight entertainment "kids" section and he chose to watch two documentaries before watching a cartoon. Cami on the other had was watching Garfield shortly after takeoff!

We arrived in LA and made it through customs/immigration without incident. Our sister-in-law Alison brought her kids Austin and Kylie up from Irvine (about an hour south) and we got to have lunch with them. So they were the first to officially meet Ian besides our travel party.

Upon check-in, we found out the flight from LA to Milwaukee was delayed 2-3 hours because of bad weather in Wisconsin. So we took a leisurely lunch and the kids enjoyed the extra time with their cousins. Around 3:10pm, we left LA and made it back to Milwaukee around 9pm. After the requisite potty stops, luggage loading, and a stop for food because it was mid-day in Korea, we made it home at 11:30pm. Cami and Ian slept and woke up. Ben stayed awake. Ben and Cami were excited to be home and were wired for a good hour, but fell fast asleep once we actually got them into bed.

So we're home. We are thankful for our safe travels and for having Ian in our arms even if he's not so sure about us yet.

Coming Home

This might be our last post until we get home. We got a family picture in front of the Christmas tree at the hotel.

We're planning to leave on Korean Air flight #17.

First night

We made it through our first night with a pretty good night sleep, compared to what we were expecting. Ian woke up several times during the night, but was comforted by laying on Dana's chest. He is use to sleeping with his foster mom, so he wanted little to do with Justin during the night. He seems to be adjusting rather well to our family. He ate all of his sweet potato baby food last night and some of his carrots this morning at breakfast. We went to breakfast again this morning and the waitstaff was excited to see the addition to our family. We spent very little time holding him during our breakfast as the waitstaff took turns holding him, talking to him and playing with him while we ate. He seemed to enjoy all of the attention by the girls.

We are headed to the restaurant opening for Ben's foster mom. We are excited to go, but realized last night that we will have no translator to help us communicate. It will be a neat experience. After the opening and lunch, we will head to the airport on the KAL shuttle bus and then off to our Korean Airlines flight. We feel spoiled by Korean Airlines as they have wonderful staff and a personal inflight entertainment system where you can choose from a variety of TV shows, movies, and documentaries. The kids enjoyed the freedom of having their own TV and remote.

Foster Parents/ Gotcha Day!

Today is the day that we have been waiting for. We spent the morning swimming (as soon as the pool opened at 5:30am), eating breakfast, and then taking a nap. We enjoyed a peaceful morning knowing that it would be an emotional afternoon. We arrived at the SWS agency at 2pm to meet with Ben and Cami's foster moms. It is an amazing experience to be able to meet with them and talk to them (through a translator). We are so blessed to know that these wonderful women loved our babies for the first few months of their lives. The kids felt right at home while visiting. Ben enjoyed sitting on his foster mom's lap while he played with some cars and a transformer-like character drawing pad that she had brought for him. Cami was very happy that her foster mom got her a pink kitty purse. We had to laugh that just yesterday, Ben had seen the transformer-like character and wanted to get one and Cami LOVES purses and small stuffed animals, so both gifts for the kids were a hit! We presented the foster mom's with some organic honey that we had purchased at the Madison Farmer's Market and also a scrapbook that Dana has been working on for several months. We felt it was important to show the foster mom's various pictures from the kids lives from the past few years. We found out that neither foster mother is a foster parent anymore. Cami's foster mom is now taking classes at the university and Ben's foster mom is opening a restaurant tomorrow. We now know that God is showing us very clearly why he waited so long for us to get Ian. If we would have traveled sooner, we would have missed the Memorial service/ Funeral for my grandma. We would have also missed the opportunity to be at Ben's foster mom's restaurant opening tomorrow. For those of you that don't know, Ben's foster mom was his second foster mom. After his first foster mom became ill, a new foster mom took over. She had him for under 2 months, yet developed such a close bond with him. Ben became very attached to her as well as the 2 foster brothers he had. We feel so blessed to have had these women care for our children. We feel honored for her to have invited us to such an important event tomorrow.

While we were visiting, the kids saw Ian and his foster mom arrive at the agency. She barely walk in the door to the agency and the kids were already excited to go and get him. It was a little chaotic ending our visit with Ben and Cami's foster moms and transitioning to Ian and his foster mom. We felt so torn, wanting to spend more time talking and observing how comfortable our kids are with them and wanting to get Ian into our arms. The time with them just seemed to short, while the time away from Ian has been too long. We have many, many pictures with them which we will treasure.

The time with Ian and his foster mom was nice. She has loved the time with Ian and is comfortable passing him on to us. She has been through this over 30 times in the last 11 years, so I am sure that there is some sadness, but it is something that she can mentally separate herself from. Ian seemed in a little shock from when he was handed over to us until he finally fell asleep in the taxi about 2 mintues away from the hotel. He was content until about 15 minutes after arriving in our hotel room when he realized that foster mom was no where to be seen. It breaks our heart because we know that this is an extremely scary time for him. We look different, smell different, talk different and there is a lot of noise with a brother and sister that want nothing more thanto kiss and hug him and play with him. It has been hard to explain to the kids that he is a little scared and needs his space. They have been longing for this moment for so long and don't quite understand why Ian doesn't want to play with them.
He is peaceful now as long as I have him on my back with the blanket covering him so he cannot see anything. If I take the blanket off, he gets very upset and crys. I figure that he just feels more secure not seeing these strange people!

Justin is off running with a guy he was planning on running the marathon with several weeks ago. They connected and he came to the hotel about an half hour ago to go running with Justin. I am glad that he has the opportunity to run in Seoul, especially with another avid runner. Once he gets back, we will upload more pictures and video. We know we are in for a long night, so keep Ian and us in your prayers. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day!

Meeting Ian

Here he is....

Ian greeted daddy by giving him a five on the hand.

Ian and Mommy...love at first sight.

Ian and Ben bond as Ian grabs onto Ben's face and Cami plays with Ian's hair.



Cami loves holding Ian. She even offered to feed him his pumpkin porridge.



Baby Ian meeting Grandma Bonnie


So this is the post most of you have been anxiously awaiting. And we made you wait a little longer than we had hoped, but we finally met Ian today. This morning, we took a taxi to SWS (HanSuh Hospital). It went quickly so we arrived 45 minutes before our 9:30am arrival time. Both Ben and Cami had passed out on the ride and both continued to sleep until we got in the van to go to see Ian.




When we arrived, Ben was still sleeping and then when he awoke he was being very shy and kept his eyes closed. Cami was having a blast with Ian. After some coaxing, we finally got Ben to open up when we had Ian start tickeling his hair. By the looks of this video clip, I think Ian will get along pretty well with brother Ben and sister Cami.

Ian has been crawling for about 1 month and he has two teeth (which arrived about 2 months ago according to foster Mom).

The foster mom said that he usually does not like strangers, but he was good with us. However, he did fuss a few times when foster mom left the room. So I'm sure he will go through an adjustment period and some greiving over the loss of his close ties with foster mom. We pray the transition is not too hard on Ian (or us).

Cami, Daddy, Ben, and Mommy at Coex Aquarium

After we met Ian, we went to COEX mall and visited the aquarium. The kids had a blast. We're now exhausted. We extended our stay at the Hilton so we don't have to move hotels and we're thinking seriously about leaving on the Wednesday afternoon flight instead of Thursday. We've covered a lot of ground and with three kids, we're not going to cover much more.

More pictures to come. At 2 pm we are suppose to meet Ben and Cami's foster parents and then at around 2:30pm, Ian is all ours!!!!

Don't forget, you can post comments now, just make sure you click on the anonymous circle when posting. Please let us know who you are though by adding your name to your post. We would love to hear from you!

12 hours to Ian

We are less than 12 hours away from meeting Ian. Our anticipation grows. We are exhausted from the day, but look forward rest and meeting our son tomorrow morning. We spent the afternoon going to Seoul Tower. The kids were excited to go on the cable car that we can see from the window of our hotel. We attempted to walk to the cable car station that takes us up the mountain. Unfortunately we took a wrong turn and realized that it is much further than we originally thought. We did find a park on our way, so the kids enjoyed swinging and climbing. Ben made it a point to add..."this is a park we have never been to. The kids and Justin have spent this year going to different parks around Madison and then marking it off on the large map covering Ben's wall in his room. Unfortunately, we had to explain to Ben that we won't be able to mark this park off the map in his room since it only shows parks in Madison. We ended up taking a taxi to the Seoul Tower cable car station. We enjoyed the ride up Namsan mountain and then the long ride up the tower. The kids liked looking out over the city. After enjoying time at Seoul Tower, we returned to our hotel and had dinner.
Ben fell asleep during dinner and Cami fell asleep shortly after Dana and Justin left to head to Insadong market to do some shopping. It was a nice feeling to know the kids were safe while we were on our date. Who knew that we would travel half way around the world to have a date night! We found some awesome deals at the market. We got several presents and even a few gifts for the kids.
We look forward to updating you with pictures of our son tomorrow. We are excited to see how much he has grown since his original picture.

Gyeongbokgung Palace

We ventured out after an awesome breakfast this morning. I cannot believe the selections offered at breakfast. You can have everything from scrambled eggs with mushrooms and cheese to miso soup or smoked salmon. The abundance of choices was amazing, even a made to order option. The kids enjoyed breakfast and the staff was impressed by their Korean spoken thank yous.

We took a taxi to the Gyeongbokgung Palace. We took a tour and learned about the different buildings inside the palace. We also were able to watch the changing of the guard ceremony. This was something Ben was intrigued with. Then we were able to dress up as guards. Ben was a little nervous at first, but once he was dressed and holding his spear, he thought it was great!

Ben and Cami guarding Gyeongbokgung Palace

Early Morning

It is finally 5:30 am in Seoul and time for the swimming pool to open. Ben has been up since 1am waiting to go swimming since he slept through the opportunity to go last night. We all slept pretty well, but were all up by 3am local time. The kids and Justin are heading to the pool while Dana uploads pictures to post and clear the camera card to fill back up today. We are excited by the adventures we will have today. The weather has cooled a little, but we hear is warmer and dryer than back home. We hear there has been snow. Thank you to Tom and Tammy and our neighbors, Kim and Josh, for making sure our sidewalks are clear. That is the one thing we forgot to plan for before we left.
We will be off to breakfast in a little while. We are excited to see what selections are available. On the Korean Airlines flight there was a choice of an omlette or Korean Ginseng Porridge. It is always fun to try new things.
We will post more pictures later....

We Made It!

We made it. We got cleared for the 12:10am flight at 11:25pm. So we had to scurry on over to the gate and we were able to start boarding when we got there. So there was no time to post.
I’m convinced we have some of the best traveling kids in the world. After dragging them all over time during the last 48 hours, they didn’t have any major meltdowns. Cami even slept through a major portion of the flight without waking up in a screaming fit. So they’ve been taking the whole thing in stride.

We checked into our hotel, Seoul Millennium Hilton this morning around 9am. The rooms weren’t ready yet, but they kindly let us stay in a temporary room while they got our rooms ready. Internet costs an arm and leg so our posts may not be as frequent as we’d hoped.
It's quite a nice hotel and everything is decorated to hilt for Christmas. There is a huge, probably 50-60 foot tall Christmas tree in the lobby. The hotel even has an Art Gallery of Vincent Van Gogh. After checking in, we also looked at the beautiful pool area, looked at the selections at the 9 different restaurants in the hotel (most out of our price range) and looked at the many trains set up around the 3 story Christmas tree and Nativity set.

After a bit of a rest and lunch at the Korean restaurant across the street from our hotel, we headed to Namdamun Market. Dana got her "New York" fix by picking up a couple of purses at bargain prices. Cami found a purse that she was very excited about buying with her money (following in mommy's footsteps), so Mommy got one to match. Cami is so excited to have matching purses! We waded through the rest of the shops and found a couple of items to buy and maybe a few to go back for (especially the Hanboks - traditional Korean clothing for the children).

Ben fell asleep at the market and has been out since. I think he's had it. So he'll probably wake up in the middle of the night, ready to go.

Tomorrow we're hoping to check out a palace and go to a couple more markets. Even though we've been here before, simply walking down the street is an adventure.

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Laying over in LA

Our travel group has assembled in Los Angeles. We're all hanging out at the Sheraton Gateway hotel waiting for the 12:10am flight on Korean Airlines tonight. Dana's mom Bonnie made the flight in from Eugene this morning and we took the Midwest flight from Milwaukee to Los Angeles. When Dana was checking in, the gate agent asked if she had just saw us. I think we might be spending a bit too much time at the airport!

Bonnie got in early so she took the shuttle down to Irvine to visit grandkids Austin and Kylie. After Austin finished up with kindergarten, Alison brought the crew up. The kids are now tearing apart the room, but having a blast. They are all getting ready to go into the pool.

We've got a few travel difficulties to overcome. We found out that larger family room at the SWS guest house is not available during our stay. We're not sure about the smaller rooms, but our agency AIAA is checking with SWS (the Korean agency). It's a frustrating process because of the time difference and such. It takes a long time to transmit information back and forth so we make a reservation request, wait a day, then make another request.

Our other difficulty is that we're still not sure about available seats on the Korean flight this evening. We're just going to show up and pray for the best.

We did find out that we'll be meeting Ian at his foster Mom's house on Monday around 10:30am. We'll then get to meet Ben and Cami's foster parents on Tuesday and after that, we get Ian! Wow, we weren't expecting to get him that fast. So we'll have him for two nights before we head home. He's either going to love having a brother and a sister or he's going to be in such shock from the change. We hope he's an easygoing baby.

Check back later to see if we made flight. No news is probably good news, although I'm hoping to have enough time to post before we get on the flight.

Travel Plans

We've made it back from Phoenix and now we're unpacking and finalizing our packing so we can leave again tomorrow morning. Our kids are playing crazily in the basement. Sometimes I really what is going through their head.. lots of airplane flights, getting to see Grandma Bonnie, going to Korea, picking up baby Ian. I wonder how they process it all.

Our travel plans as they stand now are to leave on the 850am flight from Milwaukee to Los Angeles. We arrive in LA around 11am, although the headwinds going west are strong, so we'll probably be in for a longer flight. Dana's Mom Bonnie is leaving Eugene, OR at 6am and arrives in LA around 8am. She'll go to the Sheraton Gateway hotel and hang out until we arrive. We have a room at the hotel for a "home base" and naps, etc. It looks like Dana's sister-in-law Alison and her kids Austin (6) and Kylie(4) are going to come up for dinner. The kids are hoping to swim in the pool.

Our Korean Airlines flight leaves at 12:10am (technically Friday morning, Nov. 30th). We're flying on standby tickets Dana got through a pass arrangement Korean has with other airlines. That greatly reduces our costs, but increases our risk of not getting on the flight. It sounds like there are a few seats open on that flight yet, but the reservations agent wasn't overally helpful or optimistic sounding. Hopefully a few people will decide to not take this flight so we can!

If we get on that flight, we'll arrive in Korea on Saturday morning, Dec. 1 at 6:20am - completely "missing" Friday.

We're still waiting to hear whether or not the guest house is available. If it is, we're going to stay there for our trip. If not, we have a reservation at a Hilton.

We're hoping to be able to meet baby Ian on Monday. We've tentatively planned our return trip for Thursday, Dec. 6th. And we'll arrive home in Milwaukee the same day - we get our day back. How does that whole missing day thing work when you are born in Korea - I'm sure that's going to lead to extended birthdays when the kids get old enough to figure that out on their own.

So it's back to packing.

THE Call

Ian is ready to come home. When our plane landed in Phoenix today we had a message from our social worker. She had tried calling us at home, work, and cell, but she got no answer because we were on the flight. So we called her back and she verified that Ian is ready to come home.

Ian is 9 months old today -- what a wonderful present to have this news! We are so thankful to have the answer to our prayers.

It's been a hectic day... trying to call people and find Internet access while getting to the memorial service for Grandma Meier. It's a sad and happy day at the same time.

We're formulating travel plans tonight so we'll post more when we know. We're sitting at a pizza joint in Surprise, AZ right now so we can post this entry.

Ian's Birthday

Ian will be 9 months old tomorrow, Tuesday, November 27. Another month has gone by without him being with us. It is a hard knowing that our family is not yet complete. As each day begins, we hold out hope that there will be a phone call. We know that when we least expect it, it will happen.
Tomorrow we fly to Arizona to celebrate Grandma Ginette Meier's life. We know that she is happy in heaven, but we still mourn knowing that we won't see her again until we are in heaven.

Thanksgiving

We were holding out a little hope that we would get a call today. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at Justin's aunt and uncle's house in Portage. It is always a good time with his family. There is always a big turnout for family holidays and events, which is one of many things that I love about his family. We enjoyed the afternoon and evening there before heading home. We decided to avoid the rush of shoppers this morning and the kids and I left the house around 9am to pick up a few things at the mall (discounts plus coupons..what could be better).

We got some bad news late this morning. Grandma Meier passed away yesterday afternoon in Sun City, Arizona. Grandpa was with her. We loved and adored Grandma Meier. She and Grandpa treated us like family from the first day we met them (a little over 10 years ago). We will truly miss her laughter and love. It is really hard to say goodbye to such a wonderful person.

We hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We are so thankful to have each and everyone of you in our lives. We feel truly blessed. Thank you for praying for us and supporting us in this journey to bring our son home.

Disappointment

We did not get the call. We were hopeful for a phone call, but were not counting on it. We are extremely disappointed that after being promised updated pictures and updated information on Ian for over a month now, we were told today that he is the one baby the director did not see while she was in Korea for 2 weeks. This information would have been nice to have instead of continuously promising that we would have an update when the director came back. We were even told yesterday that they would email us the updated pictures they had before Thanksgiving. Now we are told that oops, he is the one baby she did not see. How heartbreaking. I don't think they understand the stress and emotional turmoil this puts on us. To have a child out there and not know how he is doing or how he is progressing is emotionally devestating. To say that we are disappointed is an understatement. A week from today he will be 9 months old and we still only have pictures of him at 2 months. While we are grateful for at least these, we still would like to see how he looks today (or even last month). I do realize that in 6 months we will look back at this and be happy that he is in our arms, but it does not replace the days, weeks, and months that our child is not with us to hold and kiss.
We do appreciate the continued prayers and support from you as this is an extremely difficult and emotional time for us.

Still Waiting....

After many phone calls and emails, we may have updated pictures this week. This will help a little, but still can't replace the feeling of needing our baby home with us. This has been very tough waiting. It is hard to be patient when you know that your baby is growing and doing new things everyday, without you. It saddens me that we don't know how much he weighs, how tall he is, what he is doing, etc. We pray for a call tomorrow since our agency is closed the rest of the week. What a wonderful Thanksgiving it could be if we were able to celebrate it with him!

Not this week

All signs indicate that this will not be the week. That means the marathon is off. It was fun to train with the hope of doing a marathon in Korea and it helped pass the time while I thought about Ian and our trip to get thim, but it was not meant to be. That's ok.

Now there is a possibility that the call could come during Thanksgiving week. That's not a good scenario for us as domestic travel is tough around Thanksgiving and we need to make a Milwaukee to LA flight to get to our Korean Air flight.

On the plus side, the dollar seems to have rebounded slightly against the Korean won. It was trading at 1 dollar = 900 won. Today it was back up to 1 dollar = 916 won. It's still down a lot compared to Ben's adoption. The rate was approximately 1 dollar = 1200 won. The current exchange rate makes travel more expensive.

Is This the Week?

Yesterday, I woke up early to go running. I had an 8 mile run planned - the amount of distance that is typically called for during the "taper" phase of marathon training when you have one week to go before the race. I ran essentially the same route that I ran when I hatched this back in September to to run a race in Korea. I thought a lot about Ian and the time that has passed, the anticipation, the anxiety, the long runs, the Korean lessons. I thought about Dana and the feelings she's had about waiting and about Ben and Cami and how they will be traveling back to Korea.

So I ran the 8 miler in anticipation of the Nov. 18th SportsSeoul Marathon. I'm officially signed up now. My Korean teacher Sil and her mother helped make it happen. As I mentioned in a previous post, the marathon website is in Korean so Sil helped me go through the registration, but I did not see a charge on my credit card. Meanwhile, Sil had e-mailed and called the registration office. They told her the credit card did not go through, but she arranged to have her mother who is living in Korea do a bank transfer of the entry fee and I could simply give her the money. So I gave her the money and she took care of the transfer. She has been so kind and helpful - a trait most Koreans seem to possess. Plus, she's been very patient as I attempt to learn Korean.

So now that I'm registered, that's one obstacle down and one major one still to overcome. We just need that phone call. My theory is that calls come on Tues - Thurs, usually in the morning. So, if we get the call by Wednesday of this week, we can probably make it to Korea in time for the race. I'm hopeful the call will come this week, but I've been doing comparative math and that leads me to believe the call may not come until Nov. 20th. I counted the number of business days it took for the Birds to receive their call from the time the visa was approved to arrive at that date. I'm not very excited about that idea because that would mean travel during Thanksgiving week. But we'll travel whenever we can so we can get Ian. Since we have no way of checking on the status, we have to leave it in God's hands while we learn patience.

Weekend/ Gerber Party

Dana with Midwest Airlines CEO Tim Hoeksema in front of the personalized director's chair Dana received for her Weekly WOW Customer Service award

It has been a busy weekend, our last booked weekend until after Ian comes home. We have cleared our schedule to prepare for our trip, whenever God may bless us. Friday Justin's parents came down in the early afternoon. It is always nice having them come down. They agreed to watch the kids so Justin and I could go to Milwaukee to attend a meeting with my CEO to receive a Customer Service award, called a WOW. It was a nice meeting and I received a director's chair with my name on it. Definitely a nicer gift than a plaque that would collect dust. It was an honor to sit and talk with Tim. We did make our plug for service to Portland, Oregon since my parents are near there (in Eugene). After attending the meeting, we headed to the Wyndham for my 10 year dinner. It was a great time seeing people out of uniform and enjoying a wonderful dinner. We stayed for the awards and pins and then headed out to Mequon to see our goddaughter, Katelyn for her birthday. We were also able to spend time with our friends, Ross and Jenn, who were in town with their children from Minnesota. Yes, we crammed as much as possible into our trip to Milwaukee. All this with about 2 hours of sleep since I had worked the LA redeye on Thursday night.



On Saturday, we hosted a Gerber party. What exactly is a Gerber Party you may ask...I signed up on houseparty.com from a suggestion from our friends Jim and Chris. You apply to host different parties, depending on your interests. Why would I sign up? There is no selling. You invite people over and just give products away. Gerber sent me 60 pounds of Gerber products to put into gift bags and give away to friends and family with small children that came over on November 10. What is the catch? You have to hold the party on the date houseparty.com chooses and you have to take pictures and upload them to prove that you gave stuff away. We had a wonderful time chatting and eating some yummy desserts. Everyone who came got a big bag of stuff to take home with them. Easy as that! Plus, I got enough rice cereal, oatmeal, and lots of baby food to last baby Ian for several months.

Today is low key with church and family time. We plan on hanging out at home and relaxing. We talked about finishing our packing in hopes that we get a call this week. Justin has the flights all planned out based on what time of day we get the call. He is hoping for a call early in the day so that we can be on a plane to LA at 8pm out of Milwaukee the same night and hopefully connect with the Korean Airlines flight at 1:30am. He has a similar plans if we get a call later in the day. We are just hopeful that we will be blessed with a call this week. We are all anxious to go and meet our son. The only pictures we have of our 8 month old son is his 2 month picture. We are promised updated pictures from the director of our international agency, but we still haven't seen any. At this point we would rather travel and take our own pictures than be sent updated pictures. We are hopeful for travel this week. We ask for your continued prayers and support. Stay tuned for more updates...

Ian's Cell Phone

I think the kids are getting anxious to pick up Ian. Yesterday, Dana sent me an e-mail that said, "Cami thinks we should call Ian's cell phone to tell him that we need to come and get him".

I hope that enthusiasm continues once Ian comes home.

Last night the kids and I read a children's book about traveling to Seoul. Ben wants to see a wrestling match (Ssireum) and taekwondo. He was also interested in visiting the palaces. He especially liked that the book was written in Korean and English. He kept pointing out all the Korean letters that he knows. It should be a fun trip.

The wait continues....

Ian's Room with a cars and trucks transporation theme.

Cami checking out Ian's crib. Both Ben and Cami have slept in the crib since we put it back up for Ian.

We are hopeful that a call will come any day now to let us know that we can finally go and pick up our son. We are anxious to meet him and bring him home. The kids are anxious to go to Korea and meet their brother as well. This has been long and hard on all of us. We definitely did not anticipate this long of a wait. I guess we were spoiled with how quickly we got Ben and Cami. Cami says every day..."We are waiting a long time to get baby Ian". I have to agree, but try to stay positive for her sake and Ben's.

We have Ian's room ready, with the exception of the letter M from Pottery Barn Kids. I bought the I and the H last week at Mayfair in Milwaukee. They were out of the letter M, so offered to order it online for me with free shipping. Well, today I received an email stating that they do not know when it will be available. We have each of the kids initials on the wall by their beds. At least Ian won't care when his letter M arrives.

We added a few pictures of Ian's room. The kids did a great job helping us paint. It was a fun project letting them loose with paint brushes and green paint. The carpet made it mostly unharmed, however, there are a few small spots of green that made it past the sheets we had laid down on the floor.

Marathon Dreams

This morning I awoke early, ate a little breakfast and headed up to Sun Prairie High School to run 6 x 800 meter repeats on the track.

Not long after we got the referral for Ian, I was out on a run and thought it would be a great experience to run in Korea when we picked him up. I found a marathon, the JoonAng Marathon (marathon.joins.com) on Nov. 4th. It's a huge race, with over 30,000 runners and is run south of the Han river not all that far from where we'd be staying to pick up Ian.

In early September, I was optimistic that we might be traveling by that time so I started training for a marathon. Normally, I train for approximately 16 weeks, but I had about 7. So I've been concentrating on long runs and some tempo runs and speedwork during the week with more rest days than a normal plan in hopes that I can avoid overdoing it and getting injured. My goal is not to run a PR (personal record), but to finish the race.

As October started to drag on and the big brown envelope hadn't yet arrived, it became evident that we weren't going to be traveling in time for the JoonAng marathon. So I started to look a little further out. I found the SportsSeoul marathon (marathon.sportsseoul.com) on Nov. 18th. But the whole site was in Korean. And even though the kids and I have been taking Korean classes, I only know a few words - not enough to register for a marathon. So I asked my Korean teacher for a little help. We attempted to register for the race (only 40,000 won - about $45), but I'm not entirely sure my registration went through. My credit card has not been charged and I have not received an e-mail confirmation. The registration deadline was yesterday, so I do not know my fate. And who knows if we'll be in Korea that day or not. AIAA (our international agency) says that we should be traveling in early to mid-December. I'm optimistic it will be earlier, but it's really in God's hands.

So I'm still training as though I'll race on Nov. 18th, but it may all just be a dream. Hopefully I'll be able to do some sort of race while we're in Korea, but we'll address that when the time comes.

Packing

We have started packing for our trip. We want to be ready to go or at least closer to leaving as soon as we get the call. We are getting more anxious by the day and pray that God will speed up the process so that we can get our little boy. We are all excited to meet him. The kids ask every day when we get to go on the plane and see Ian. Cami is practicing changing diapers on her dolls so that she can help change Ian's diapers. Ben told us that he will be getting up in the middle of the night when Ian is sad so that he can give him a bottle. Hopefully this excitement will continue once Ian is home.

A Little History

Welcome to our blog. Our friends Laura and Chip Bird have a blog going for their adoption experience with their son Owen and we thought this might be an easy way to keep everyone up to date.

Our story with Ian began on August 3rd. That is the day we got the call from our social worker, Anne Johnson, telling us we had a referral. I drove over to Anne's office during lunch and she gave me the information. I resisted looking at the pictures until I could get home to show Dana. We rushed the paperwork to our doctor, Dr. Yu. He looked it over and said everything looked fine.

We hadn't yet settled on a name so we did not tell anyone yet. On Saturday morning, August 4, we told our parents about Ian Hank Marthaler. We settled on Ian and Hank comes from his Korean name Hankyung. Ben has Parker for a middle name as his Korean name was Park, Doo Jin. Cami kept her Korean first name as her middle name - SungHwa. After settling on a name, we called our parents with the news. Then we met Dana's brother Mike, his wife Alison, and their kids Austin and Kylie, who were visiting from Southern California, for breakfast and told them the exciting news.

Because of Korea's new adoption rules, we couldn't officially send our acceptance in until August 19th. I ran (literally) the package to FedEx and then we started waiting.

The next step was getting Ian's legal documents from Korea. In mid-September, they were sent to our international agency, AIAA, who then forwarded them to our social worker Anne Johnson. She then sent them to Karen Slaney at the State of Wisconsin. Ms. Slaney approved the paperwork and sent it to the immigration (USCIS) office in Milwaukee on September 28. Then we waited for the big brown envelope from USCIS. It finally came on October 26. The letter, dated October 24, said Ian's visa was approved and it was being sent to the consulate in Seoul.

And that's where we are today. Now we wait for the call to travel. It could be anywhere from 2 - 6 weeks. His Korean passport needs to be issues and then we should get a call.