Family Day #2

This past Friday, August 26, marked our second year as a family of three. This time of year always has me a bit weepy for both the happy moments and the excruciatingly painful moments of that time. It's funny how you can look back at sleep deprived, exhausting, sad, confusing events fondly after time has passed. The weather reminds me of our time in Seoul and how it smelled, tasted, how the air felt to breathe and of course...the anticipation, the meeting of our son for the first time, the tears we held back as we first laid eyes on him, our anxiety of becoming parents and all the rookie mistakes and all the things we did unwittingly right. The past week we've looked at a lot of pictures, hugged our YoungMin extra tight, talked about our trip and homecoming and thanked Korea and all the people that sacrificed for us to become a family.
Family Day is one that only our kids get. Everyone has a birthday, but a special few get a family day. It's a day that we get to celebrate with no expectations to throw a party and no disappointment if someone forgets, but to just enjoy each other and our togetherness. So what did we do? We headed to the Morton Arboretum and then out for a Korean lunch. Ahh...do I LOVE Korean food in August!

Family Day is really about Gabe, so we let him direct where we went:

How about the Hedge Maze?



A trip down the slide...

Pointing out cool things to mommy...

Pumping water with daddy...

A trip through the flowers...

Giving daddy a chase...

Gotta have some sand...

And a little 'flying'...

Mmmmm... jap chae!


Now here's a little chronicle of our Family Day Mommy/Gabe photos...

2011:

2010:

Care Package Time!!

One thing we parents of kiddos living in Korea can do while they are living so far away is send a care package over to start to show our love. You can't just send one to the agency because of custom fees, so you need to find someone to bring one for you. Luckily, a friend of mine, Jennifer, just got her travel call after a looonng wait to bring home her son and she graciously agreed to bring our first package.
Levi goes in once a month around the 12th (because his b-day is Jan 12) for a well-baby check. I'm so happy the Jee Ho's foster family will get the package in September!

The Loot:

So what's in the package we're sending?
* A cute American flag Mickey Mouse tee-shirt
* Mommy's Little Tiger sweat suit, since Levi was born in the year of the Tiger (not pictured, cuz I jammed it in in the last minute)
*A drum long sleeved shirt that Gabe has one of too
*California Baby lotion
*Goodnight Moon written in Hangul
*A little blankie,
*Teddy Bear from Grammie
* The ubiquitous soft photo album with some pics of us
*Socks and other clothes
*A beautiful tea towel and some lotion for the foster family along with a translated note

I hope this package contains items the foster family can use and I also hope they know how much we already love Levi JeeHo!

The Real Deal!

We got the call last week the OUR son was *finally* ready to appear. We are thrilled to announce our son, Levi JeeHo! When we look at his picture, the memories of Gabe's referral come flooding back with his tough guy look and bursting with personality. He was born on January 12, 2011 in Seoul and we hope to have him home next summer. We love our little guy and have a feeling that Levi and Gabe will be quite the pair!