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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