Happy Anniversary!

I can't believe, one year ago today, my hubby and I sent in our application to our agency. We had decided to take a leap of faith and pursue God's leading in adopting from South Korea! As I reflect on this year, there is no doubt that God has blessed us. He has given us wonderful and supportive family and friends, provided an opportunity for me to do something I love through my Getty Art Studio business, and met our financial needs all along the way. But most importantly, God has opened our eyes to adoption, and what an amazing miracle it is! Adoption has consumed our hearts and our thoughts, and now we can't imagine not building our family through adoption! Thank you, Lord, for this year and for Your many blessings.

I Heart Korean Food!

For the last two weekends, we have had the pleasure of hosting my husband's cousin, Annie, and her family from Maryland. They were stopping here in Charleston on their way to Disney World and then again on their way home. We were so excited to get to spend time with them, since we live so far away and don't get a chance to see them much. Annie's husband, Man, is Korean, so he was a great source of information for us, as we hounded him with questions about Korea. :) He was also our guide in trying Korean food for the first time. I was so excited to get to try Korean food but was also nervous. I was nervous because I really wanted to like it, because it is a part of my child's culture and want to make sure we implement it in our child's life, and that would be hard to do if we hated it! Well, it turns out, I had nothing to worry about. It was awesome! I am really looking forward to going to Korea even more now! Thanks to the Kim's for stopping through and giving us some awesome memories. Love you guys!

FIVE MONTHS!

We have been waiting for referral five months today! Getting closer! :)

GOT QUESTIONS?

Lately, it seems, we have been getting a lot of questions regarding our adoption. We feel so blessed that people are genuinely interested in our journey and have been there for us through prayer and support, so we are more than happy to give updates when we can. I thought it might be a good idea to include some of the common questions we have been asked lately, and do an updated post. So here you go...

Question #1: When are you getting your baby?

Good question! I wish I knew! The adoption process is always changing, so there are never any guarantees. Only estimates. Our agency, apparently one of the most conservative, currently estimates that we could receive our referral anytime between now and the fall. Things moved VERY quickly last month with referrals and travel calls, so we are hoping this trend continues. The recent time lines with my Korean blog friends is that they are receiving their referrals around the 6 to 8 month range after their dossier is submitted. Our dossier was submitted September 20, so that would put us around March to May. Our agency continues to insist that even though things are looking good right now, that it may not stay this way. They have it on very good authority that things will start slowing down. They aren't exactly the most positive people I know. ;) So, I hope for a spring referral, but expect a summer one just so I don't get my hopes up. I can't even think about it being in the fall, but you never know. Once we get the referral, we still have to wait 2 to 4 more months to travel to Korea to get our baby. So, in short, we still have a while. Oh, the joys of waiting! :)

Question #2: How's the wait going?

We are actually doing pretty well. Don't get me wrong, I am so excited to think about the day we get that phone call about our child, but I truly am enjoying this time right now. I don't know if it is because I have worked with kids before and I know how much work it is to take care of them, or the fact that this is REALLY going to happen for us soon, but I am just VERY aware right now of our freedom! Lazy Saturdays, Sunday afternoon naps, spontaneous trips, sick days, just don't happen much when you're a parent. I'm taking it all in! I'm enjoying my time with my hubby and appreciating the extra time God gave us to be with each other alone. So, so far so good! Of course, ask me this 6 months from now and you might get a different answer. ;)

Question #3: What is the situation over in Korea regarding international adoption?

I have blogged about this briefly before, but here is some more information I found recently that helps explain it a little more. Korean traditional society places significant weight on paternal family ties, bloodlines, and purity of ‘race’. This way of thinking has created a stigma of domestic adoption. Many families would rather go through excessive and expensive procedures such as surrogacy or in vitro fertilization to ensure that their offspring are related to them than to accept a child of a complete stranger into their family. The few Korean families who do adopt choose babies less than a month old so that they can pass them off as their natural born offspring. Unwed pregnant woman, children of mixed race, or those without fathers are not easily accepted in Korean society. Therefore, in most cases, Korean birth mothers who choose adoption, know that they are choosing a better life for their babies. There has been recent efforts to change this way of thinking, and things are beginning to improve, but international adoption is still very much in need there.

Questions #4 and #5: How old will your child be? Will it be a boy or girl?

I have answered this before as well. But I'm sure everyone could use a refresher. ;) Our child will be around 5 to 6 months at referral and then about 8 to 10 months once we go to pick him/her up. Regarding the sex...Korean orphans are available for domestic adoption until they are 5 months old and then they are released to international adoption. When domestic adoptions happen in Korea, they usually chose a girl, leaving mostly boys available for international adoption. We are open to either sex, but it is most likely we will get a boy. :)

Question #6: How much money do you have left to raise?

After our recent grant from Show Hope and extremely generous donation from a family member, we have a little over $7000 left to raise! Still a BIG number, but not as BIG as $33,000! The breakdown is about $2100 left to accept our referral and then an estimated $5000 for travel expenses! We still have about 3 other grants out there that we have applied for and we are supposed to hear from one of them any day now. I'll keep you updated if we hear anything. ;)

Question #7: What are your plans with Getty Art Studio after the adoption is finalized?

I initially created Getty Art Studio solely to help us fund raise for our adoption. Now that we are getting closer and closer to our goal, I have to decide if I will continue it as a personal business. I have loved creating these paintings for everyone and would love to keep doing it. So, if I continue to have enough interest, I would love to make Getty Art Studio a business. Along with that, I have decided, inspired by the generosity I have seen, that I would really like to contribute a portion of my proceeds toward some sort of adoption cause. Either a Christian grant organization or a specific family adopting. But this is all something I am still praying about and letting God lead me to how he wants it to go. So, we will see. ;)

Question #8: Do you have names picked out?

Yes, we do! We have had names picked out for a little over a year now. For the longest time, we've had an issue with names. The first 10 years we were together, we could NEVER agree on a name! Good thing we had years of infertility to figure that out! ;) Bry likes names that weren't trendy, and he doesn't want a name that can easily be misspelled because his name is misspelled so often. I like common names, and I always considered the meaning of the name. We both agreed we liked names that could have several nicknames associated with them, as we are pretty crazy (especially me) with our nicknames. :) So, after years of discussing our options, and both compromising in some areas, we finally decided our little boy's name would be John and our little girl would be Charlotte. Since we like nicknames, we like the idea of calling them Jack and Charlie. We loved Charlotte as it wasn't a very common name, but it was classic and I always liked boy names for girls, so Charlie was a good nickname. The meaning is "little and womanly" which I thought was just sweet and I could easily envision our little womanly Charlie! Since most likely we are to get a boy for our referral, I really wanted his name to mean something special. We chose Jack, not for it's popularity, but for it's meaning, "God is Gracious." Bryan is actually starting to get upset that he is seeing more and more kids named Jack and has talked about changing it, but it took us WAY too long to agree, so I'm making him keep it! ;) As they get older, they could choose to go by their nicknames, or their more grown ups names. We are looking forward to meeting our little Jack or Charlie soon! ;)

THANKS FOR ASKIN! ;)