Gute Reise

We just finished packing Sheref's luggage for Korea. And, yes, we are toasting our last night as a family of 5 with some bubbly...I always planned to toast our biological children's births with good wine, but the morphine, vomiting, magnesium and blood transfusions sort of put a damper on that. So thank you, Charlie, for the opportunity to be healthy, non-drugged and in good spirits for your arrival!! I am on call tomorrow, so I'll be gone as of 7am. My mom arrives around noon, shortly after which Sheref will leave to drive to Atlanta in preparation for his flight Sunday am to Seoul.

I packed the larger suitcase, which mainly contains baby items for Charlie, gifts for our adoption agency's facility for babies who do not have foster families (which is called the reception center -- "orphanage" is far too draconian for this facility that provides excellent nearly one-on-one care for the kiddos), and gifts for everyone in Korea associated with Charlie's care. Sheref packed the smaller suitcase, which is his clothing and personal items. His comment after trying to fit clothes for a week into the suitcase: "Wow, I am entirely too large. My clothes are huge." For those of you who do not know us in real life and may be wondering why I keep perseverating on how huge Sheref is, he is not really all that HUGE. He needs the "big and tall" stores only for the "tall" component. Still, his clothes are, indeed, HUGE.

My "assignments" for Sheref in Seoul -- very modest indeed. I've commissioned him to buy us and every one of our children a set of Korean wedding ducks (apparently a Korean tradition -- a pair of ducks to symbolize the marriage union, and I plan to give each of our children their set when they get married -- if they do not get married, then at some major life event. Ducks remind me of my maternal grandmother and I have several of her very nice, fancy ducks in our home, so double nice connotation there for me). Additionally, he is to look for Korean art. Beyond that, I've "commissioned" him to have fun, enjoy the food, soju and culture, and just in general have a great, fabulous trip.

Boo!

Today is Halloween dress-up day at the girls' schools. Ella's school allows kids to dress up, with the caveat that they have to dress as a book character. Last year she was Laura Ingalls (note that the dress she wore, which was supposed to represent 1870s pioneer fashion, was actually an old dress of mine -- let that be a reflection on my mother's fashion sense, not mine:). But I digress...

Anyways, this year she is Kaya from one of the American Girl books. Originally the outfit was intended to be Sacajawea, and she will still be Sacajawea on Halloween. However, to meet the school requirements, today she is Kaya.

Sweet Rosie is a kitty. She's feeling good in her costume! She is particularly enamored with the giant black bow I put in her hair. You can't see it in the picture, because it is holding her ponytail back, but it is HUGE. Doesn't really fit with the whole feline theme, but she wanted her bow...

Finally, Miss Lucy is a ballerina. I'm a little worried about the fact that her underwear shows under her leotard. We had a little talk that the tutu must stay on the whole day so she isn't flashing the class her Dora underwear...Lucy had a little moment this morning where she was momentarily concerned that Rose's costume was "cooler" than hers. A little swipe of pink lipstick and a bit of sparkly blue eyeshadow (yes, I do just happen to have sparkly blue eyeshadow in my make-up stash -- don't judge) quickly nipped that in the bud. As you can see in this picture, she is feeling like hot stuff!!

I am also going to take a moment to revel in the fact that every single item in all 3 costumes was already in our house...

Oh Happy Day

Ella is ecstatic...

These former cueballs are

the babies of the family no longer...

Baby Charlie is coming home! We had imagined, best case scenario, that Charlie would be home for Halloween. That goal won't quite be realized, but it won't be terribly far off. Sheref will be leaving on Halloween and flying non-stop to Seoul, South Korea. He'll sight-see and feast on Korean food for a few days, and will then meet Charlie and his wonderful foster family on Thursday. I'll drive and meet Sheref and Charlie in Atlanta Saturday evening November 6th, and we'll either drive the 4-5 hours back that night, or if it seems like the better plan, stay in a hotel and drive back Sunday morning.

Besides the obvious giddiness at knowing how soon we'll meet little Jin-yeong, I am having fun imagining my giant 6'8" husband in Korea. While I am probably the exact size of an average Korean woman, Sheref is, umm, not the size of typical Korean. Or a typical, well, person. I'm picturing the constant stares at a ridiculously tall semi-Middle Eastern-looking man in Korea. I'm also envisioning people being very impressed with the fact that he truly loves Korean food, and also with the sheer amount of it he will eat. They will also be impressed with how nice he is, how polite, and how much he loves that little boy he will meet for the first time next Thursday.

Rewind -- Halloween past

For the past 2 years or so, all my girls are old enough to choose their own Halloween costumes. I'm pretty sure 2007 was the last year I chose Rose & Lucy's costumes. The reason behind that might become obvious in just a second. That year, I found a cute dragon costume for Lucy and this adorable (fine, that might be debatable depending on your perspective) pink poodle costume for Rose. As you can see, Rose loved it. If I'm honest, when I brought the costume home from the used clothing store where I bought it for $9.99, Sheref thought it was a joke. He thought I must be kidding -- would I really dress my child in this ridiculous pink poodle costume? Yup, I sure would. And did. And Rose loved it. That should be obvious from the picture.

Down by the river

We live on an island. Technically, and also in name/address, we really do. I, as a born and bred "Yankee" (yup, people really call Northerners "Yankees" down here) used to be really impressed by that fact. Now I'm pretty much over it. For those of you non-coastal dwelling people, it is not quite as exotic as it sounds. That said, our "island" neighborhood has quite a few beautiful parks, trails, and quirky little "extras" that give our neighborhood some charm. This picture is of the girls in a public treehouse overlooking the Ashley River, which feeds into the Atlantic in downtown Charleston, about 1/2 mile from this spot.

Confession: as natural, good clean fun-ish as this picture looks, do you know what they are doing here? They are watching some Scoobie Doo movie on Sheref's iphone. Yeah, way to take advantage of our beautiful surroundings, I know.

Class B Arrives in Korea

I'm only writing this post to remind myself later of the timeline leading up to meeting Charlie. If FedEx is to be believed, our class B waiver arrived in Korea today (which was yesterday, sort of, in Korea as Seoul is 14 hours ahead of EST in the U.S.). I think it arrived at Holt, our adoption agency. From there it goes to the embassy or somewhere else official. Then Charlie's visa gets issued. Somewhere in there is the "visa interview," which is an appointment for which Charlie's foster mom has to take him to an "interview" for his visa. Imagining how this goes down just cracks me up. I imagine a stern, mean-faced official staring down Korean babies, getting up in their little faces, and giving them the third degree about why they want to emigrate to the United States -- "so little baby, why do you want to leave Korea and go to the U.S??" Hopefully not the way it really goes down...yeah, probably not.

Anyways, so we wait. Hopefully sometime next week we'll get the call that we're all clear to go get little Jin-yeong.

Over the ocean...

Our class B waiver, which is just another (pretty silly) paperwork step to bringing Charlie home, should be on its way to Korea right now. Or at least on a FedEx truck on its way to the airport...

We received our class B waiver (which, for any adoption people reading this, is a super anti-climactic looking single sheet of paper with only a few sentences of text and room for signatures and notary stamp) yesterday, had it signed, notarized and on its way to our adoption agency's headquarters in Oregon last night. Today it arrived at our adoption agency, was blessed by them as having been filled out correctly, and should be on its way to Seoul right now.

We are estimating 1-2 weeks before we get our travel call, permission to go to Seoul and meet sweet Charlie!