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.