Referral!

We received our referral for our baby boy on February 5th, 2009. His Korean name is Yoon Si Ah. We are going to name him Drew and use his Korean name as his middle name. He was born on August 11, 2008. It will still be 2-4 months until he officially joins our family. We have lots of work to do to prepare for his homecoming!

Happy Holidays

This holiday season we have continued to take part in all of our traditional family activities. We pulled out the ever growing box of holiday books, visited Meijer Gardens, and bought raffle tickets to win a Christmas tree at Chesaning's Festival of Trees event (we have done this for years and have never won. As tradition would have it, this year was no different). We did notice some new things this year though... At Meijer Gardens, Brian took a picture of Elly and I in front of the Korean themed tree. I got excited when I realized that there might be a Korean tree. Ironically, as I was telling Brian that we needed to look for the tree, we found it standing right behind us. We also noticed that our local tree farm has a Korean fir as one of its varieties. We missed the hay ride heading toward the part of the farm where the Korean fir trees were grown and it was much too cold that day to back track, but it is definitely something we will remember to check out next year. Happy Holidays!

**At the end of this month it will be 6 months since the completion of our homestudy.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Happy Halloween

Halloween was so much fun this year! Elly had special activities at
school and a party at her babysitter's house. We had pizza
and went trick-or-treating with neighborhood friends.

As you can see Elly was a Michigan State cheerleader. She finally narrowed down her costume choice about a week before Halloween. Hot Dog, Bee, and Witch all made it to her short list. She has already decided that she wants to be a Frog next year.

Harvest Day

Harvest Day is like a holiday in our family. Everyone gathers and picks the pumpkins from my Grandpa's pumpkin patch. Then we eat a variety of soups and other seasonal goodies. The kids enjoy tractor rides and guessing how many pumpkins we picked. This year it was close to 800!! In the late spring my Grandma gave each family a seed to see who could grow the biggest pumpkin. When Elly visited our pumpkin she would sing it a song and give it a hug to make it grow. Despite this effort, our pumpkin was the runt of the bunch.

I have recently been reading about Korean holidays. Interestingly, in Korea one of the biggest holiday celebrations is the Harvest Moon Festival (Chuseok). This is a holiday where families visit their hometowns and enjoy traditional foods. It is fun finding connections and similarities between the two cultures.

First Day of School

Elly was so excited for her first day of school! She woke up extra early and skipped her typical morning routine of juice and Arthur. She was especially upset when I delayed our departure for a quick photo. Elly has been going to daycare since she was 5 months old, but it was still difficult to see her walk into the school building with her backpack on.