It’s Surprising!

As many of you know, Jason threw me a surprise party for my birthday this past weekend! It was Asian themed. Apparently, Jason and my good friend Rebecca had been planning this for a while. Looking back there were some clues, but not many and at the time I did not notice them, so I was very surprised!

His cover story was that my in-laws were coming into town to visit our new nephew (born on April 17th). We were cleaning the house to host Jason’s mom and dad. He did A LOT of the cleaning and I helped a little. I had to work a lot this week so he was left to do most of the cleaning.

He got me out of the house to decorate and get the house ready by having Rebecca invite me over to her house for dinner and a craft. Afterward, we were going to sneak back to my house to play the Wii. So, I thought that it was just going to be the two of us playing Wii, but instead I was greeted with a load “SURPRISE!!!” by my friends and family as I entered the house.

The house was decorated with paper lanterns, bamboo sticks, Asian vases, a “Surprise!” sign written in Korean (which actually translated as saying, “It’s Surprising!”), and a lot of people were wearing Asian hats. The food was take-out from Leeann Chin’s (YUMMMY). They had planned activities such as: Origami, fortune writing, and a 20 question “quiz” about yours truly. They handed out party favors that were chopstick pencils, actual chopsticks, and Korean drum ornaments. I think that the biggest surprise was the gift that Jason got for me. He ordered a traditional Korean dress call a Hanbok weeks ago from eBay. It is beautiful, and I wore it for the party.

The party was a lot of fun. I was so touched to see all of my friends and family there to surprise me. Some people had to travel a long way to get there and I really appreciate that!

Thank you to everyone who helped with the party and kept the secret. What a fun night!

Here is a picture of the Hanbok




Here is me next to the sign that says "It's Surprising" in Korean



Here are some pictures of the house decorated

Parenting Class

We went to a parenting class that the adoption agency put on this weekend. The class was with other families adopting internationally. There were about 8 couples there and 1/2 were adopting from Korea and 1/2 were adopting from Ethiopia. A retired nurse who used to specialize in international adoption ran the class. It was very informative. Since we will not be getting a new born it was nice to get an idea of what developmental stage the child will be at. It will be sad that we will miss some important stages of growth: such as the first smile, learning to crawl and first words or sounds, but something that we are not going to feel cheated about missing is the sleeping schedule of a new born! : )
We also got some ideas of how to "baby proof" our house since we will be getting a child that is already on-the-move! As a gift they handed out outlet covers, a good place to start! To celebrate completing the class we went out the lunch and did some shopping together (something we wont be doing much of once the child comes - so we hear!)

Children's Books

Many of you might be wondering what to do as you wait with us. I have an idea. We received a list of children's books that deal with adoption: both domestic and international. Here is a list of the ones that I like so far:

We Adopted you Benjamin Koo
I Don’t Have Your Eyes
We See the Moon
Over the Moon
Through Moon and Stars and Night Skies
Red Thread: An Adoption Fairy Tale
Tell Me Again, About The Night I Was Born
Adoption Is for Always
Little Miss Spider
Horace

You could check out these books and buy some for your house... it would be nice to have them around at grandma/grandpa's and memaw/pepaw's and aunts/uncle's houses too. OR you could buy them for us to have at our house : ) For those of you with kids already, this might be a great way to introduce the idea of adoption.