Garage Sale

Have you been sitting around wondering..."do I really need all of this clutter around my house? - or - "how can I help Jason and Fawnda with this adoption thing?" Well, have I got an answer for you!

We are planning on having a garage sale to help raise some funds for our travel to Korea. Here is how you could help:

• Declutter your house and donate your used stuff to our garage sale
• Shop at our garage sale
• Tell others to come and shop at our garage sale

All sales proceeds will go directly to the cost of our travel: airfare, lodging, meals, etc. We will be having this huge sale on June 12th, 13th and 14th (rain or shine) at Fawnda's parents' house. If you have some stuff that you would like to donate, but are unable to get it over to Brooklyn Park, we can come and pick it up from you. Let us know!

Korea Night

Last Monday night was Korea Night at our adoption agency. We were able to bring our parents to this event at the agency where the program was designed to talk about the Korean adoption program and the Korean culture.

The evening started out with some Korean food and drink. We were able to get a sampling of a Korean meal, including some after dinner candies. Then, the program moved on to discuss the Korean culture and values of the family structure. I have read some books on this, but it was nice to hear it explained in “lay-man’s” terms. We had a break and got a chance to go to a little Korean market that they had set up. They had a lot of beautiful items, which ranged from pens, to jewelry, to books, to hand crafted items like pottery and carvings. Jason and I got a very pretty vase, which looks great in our living room.

Here are pictures of the vase:






After the break, they talked about what foster care is like in South Korea. We got to hear about what kind of food our child is eating, their sleeping arrangements, and other care issues. From what we heard, the foster care over there is tremendous, the foster mom pretty takes care of every need the child has immediately, and we can expect to receive a high-maintenance little bundle of joy. We concluded the evening by discussing possible situations that could come up about adoption and our reaction to them. For example, what’s the best way to respond when someone says, “Where’d you get ‘em?” Or, “How much did they cost?” These were just a couple of the questions that were discussed, but it’s amazing how much children comprehend and retain, isn’t it?

We had a great time at Korea Night. The agency did a tremendous job putting the event on, and we wish that we could have brought all of our friends and family. It was really nice to be able to involve our parents (the grandparents) in the events of the evening. Please feel free to ask us (or our parents) more about the evening. We’d be happy to discuss it in more detail with you.

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.

Fingerprints

We had our fingerprints done today to finish our I600A form (the form we had to fill out to be allowed to bring an immigrant into the country) we had to go to the USCIS (United States Customs and Immigration Services) office which was in St. Paul off of Snelling Ave (not too far from the state fair grounds). Our Appointment was at 8 AM, of course since it was so early it was also snowing to add to the excitement! We arrived about 20 minutes early and had to wait until 8:00 exactly, for them to open the doors. Once inside we had some more paper work to fill out, and then it was on to the fingerprinting!

I have to say I was quite impressed with the fingerprinting capabilities that they had. They were able to scan all of finger prints into the computer, so there was no ink!! We left with squeaky-clean fingers!

So, now it take 90 business days for them to process our information to give us permission to bring an immigrant into the country. This must be done before we can travel. Since we are getting this done now, it should not interfere with our travel arrangements when the referral comes (which might not be for a while anyway).

So now we have officially done everything we can do (except pray and wait)!

We’re on THE LIST!

Today we had our 2nd home-study interview with our Social Worker (SW). This time it was in our home. Let me give you a glance of our life leading up to this home visit:

Fawnda- cleaning the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living-room, dusting, vacuuming and scrubbing the tub. Trying to calm Jason down from being totally stressing out about the SW coming to our house and having it be clean enough to parent a child.

Jason-cleaning the basement (including the storage room and laundry room), cleaning the office, vacuuming the whole house again (stupid dog hair) and the stairs, scrubbing the top of the stove, going back over all the parts of the house that Fawnda cleaned to make sure that she did a good enough job.

Thankfully we did not get into a fight about the house and we were able to get it, as Annie would say: “Shinning like the top of the Chrysler building!”

Our SW showed up at exactly 12:30 and we gave her the official tour of the house. We then sat down in the dining room to finish our interview. We talked about our parenting philosophy, our support systems and our plans to share our adoption story with our family, friends and our future child. After we were done with the interview she had some papers for us to sign, approving us for the adoption.

So our next question was: “What is our next step?” to which she replied: “you are now done with the home-study and your name is going on THE LIST!” So we are OFFICIALLY waiting. Our names are now in the Korea Program waiting to get to the top of the pile and to get our referral. This could be a long wait, and we may not see a referral for several months.

I am still in shock that we are done with all the paper work and home-study. We just have to get invited to be finger-printed for approval to bring an immigrant into the country, and to wait some more. We thought that there were still more steps to be done. I think that this waiting is going to be the hardest part because there is little we can do; up to now we have been very active in getting to the next step. Now we just wait. To help with the wait, there is a support group for waiting families that meets once a month. I am thinking of attending next month to get support and also, hopefully, to meet other adoptive families.

After we get our referral, we have to wait 12-14 weeks to travel to the country to pick up our child. We found out today that we have some time during our stay in Korea to do some site-seeing. It will be cool to go on some of the tours and learn more about the culture.

Home-study Interview #1

We had our first interview with our Social Worker (SW) today. The whole weekend I was waiting to feel nervous, even today as we were walking up to the agency I thought that I would get some butterflies in my stomach, but I never did. I felt calm and confident the whole time. I could tell that people have been praying for us and that God was working in this situation! Our SW did a fantastic job of making us feel comfortable and relaxed during the whole interview. The SW’s job is to advocate for us during this process so in order to do that she wants as much information about us as possible.

The interview started with us asking the questions that we had for our SW. Then, our SW went through our self study and asked us questions to help her clarify our self-study responses. Most of the questions our SW asked of us were repeats from the self-study, but I am glad that we had completed the self-study so that we had already thought of our answers, instead of coming up with something on the spot. We seemed to really gel with our SW and we feel confident in her ability to work with us, which is a huge relief!!

Our next step is the 2nd interview, which is in our home. It is scheduled for March 6th (which is next week already!) So, I need to stop typing and start cleaning, cleaning, and some more cleaning!!

We have a Social Worker!

We got a call last week from our social worker to set up our first Home-Study interview. We are very excited to say that we are finally in our home-study, and it is great to have the name of our social worker.

Our first interview is set up for Monday, Feb 25th at 10 AM. We will be meeting with her at the agency. She said that it usually takes between 2-3 hours to conduct the interview.

So our next step is to finish the first interview at the agency on the 25th. We will then schedule another interview to take place in our home. After that second interview, our Social Worker will write up our Home-Study, and pass it along to the Korea Program. It really is great to reach these milestones, and to see some more coming in the foreseeable future.

Self-Study DONE!!

We had to stay up past midnight on Thursday night, but we are DONE with the self-study and Jason dropped it off at the agency on Friday. We cannot tell you how happy we are to be done. The questions were very thought provoking, and very difficult to answer on paper. Here are some samples:

Personal History
Describe your childhood and adolescence. What memorable events stand out? How were you encouraged and disciplined? What methods of discipline were more and less effective? What was your relationship with your parents and siblings? How did you deal with the transition from adolescence to adulthood? Briefly describe your current job. What do you like best/least? Do you plan any changes? How important is it to your toal life? How would you describe your state of health? What kinds of illnesses have you had or do you have? Describe your use of tobacco, alcohol or medications. How have you handled infertility in your family? What do you do to promote your health/wellness and that of your family?
(Thus concludes question number one, only eighteen more of these to go.)

Current Relationships
Describe your spouse, including stengths and weaknesses. What would you like to change about them? Describe your marriage, including communication, roles, areas of conflict, handling of disagreements, decision-making process and feelings towards spouse's parents. How will adoption impact this relationship? How will you take care of and maintain your marital relationship?

Personal Characteristics
Describe yourself, including strengths and weaknesses. What would you like to change about yourself? How do you react when you feel unappreciated? How do you express feelings such as frustration, conflict, and anger?

Parenting Skills
Describe your parenting philosophy, experiences and skills. Include plans for discipline and nurturing. Describe future goals and aspirations that you have for your child. What about parenting gives you, or will give you satifaction? What parenting skills/techniques have you used before? Have you had prior experience with your local school system? Do you feel prepared to advocate for your child as needed?

Adoptive Parenting
a.) Please describe your personal experience with adoption.
b.) What motivated you to adopt? Please discuss infertility if applicable.
c.) Describe the attitude of your extended family and friends toward your adoption plan.
d.) How do you plan to talk to your future child and others about adoption?
e.) What do you think your feelings to your future child's birth parents will be?
f.) What are your fears, concerns, and hopes about parenting through adoption?

Each of these sections is considered ONE question. There were 19 questions in all. And NO! you may not read our answers, and we don't need any suggestions as to how we should have answered. :) Can you imagine completing all of these questions, packaging them up, and mailing them off to a total stranger who will decide your fate in becoming a future parent? [insert sarcastic comment here] Maybe we should take a poll - how many of you have, or would care to answer all of these questions for your family?

So the next step is to wait for our Social Worker to call us and set up an appoinment for our first interview for our homestudy. There are a total of two interviews - one at the angency and one at our house. It really feels great to have this step done!