A little Adoption Shower... (very picture heavy)

Last Sunday my wonderful friend, Heather, threw my little family of three a shower to help us prep to become a family of four! She put together a beautiful event that meant so much to all of us. (thanks dear friend)

Heather and I have been friends since Elementary school and I am so very lucky to have her.

The day was filled with eating, celebrating, and lots of love and smiles. I can't begin to thank all of our friends and family enough for making the day so special!!!! Jackson is already loved so much. We are so so so looking forward to the day we can share him with everyone.

Now that we have all this fun stuff, we are working on putting his room together. We just recently decided we are going to put Jackson in Gracie's current room. We made this decision for a few reasons.... 1. Grace has decided she wants the room with the walk-in closet (such a girlie girl) 2. Her current room is closer to our room. We will be spending a lot of time with Jackson at night during the transition so, this seems to be better choice. 3. It's going to be fun for both kids to have fresh new rooms for this next chapter in our family life.

We hope to have both rooms ready and put together in the next few weeks.

Some shower pics from the fun day...
The reason for the day of celebrating......

The Flowers Grammy brought for centerpieces. She happened to walk into a flower shop owned by a Korean family. They helped put together the beautiful arrangements. Thanks Grammy!!


Eric C*rl* Quilt made by Grandma Carol for Jackson's Eric C*rle themed room.

Gracie and a special gift..




I had lots of little hands to help me out, so sweet

Many Korean themed books, story books and language books from my mom. I can't wait to read them with my kiddos

KJ is a huge Bears fan. We received lots of Bears wear to dress Jackson in. Too bad the Bears couldn't bring home a win that afternoon.

Me and my hostess...

Some friends and family.....

Bee B*m Bop

For fun on New Year's Day we made our first Korean dish at home. This was not our first taste of Korean food but, the first time we decided to give cooking it a shot. Every time we have gone out for Korean, I order Bee Bim B*p (hold the beef) and it is always really good. So, we figured this was a great choice for our first dish to try at home. Also, it is a pretty simple dish consisting of vegetables, rice and egg. We used the recipe in the back of this book we bought for Grace and Jackson. It was simple and we had a great time making it. I now have no excuses not to make it more often. :)

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New Year's Eve Baby

Jackson is an NYE baby....oh, how I love that. So, he is now a one year old! We had a small family celebration with a cake and candles. Gracie blew them out for him and we all closed our eyes and sent over birthday thoughts to him. We are sad we've missed a year of his life but, know things all happen for a reason and he is being well taken care of until the day he can come home.


It just so happened to work out that the last care package we sent over was delivered to ESWS last week (with another family that got to pick up their beautiful little girl). I am hoping it will get to Jackson's foster family when they go in for his 12month well baby check up.... a nice little bday surprise for him.

We obviously can't be sure how Jackson celebrated his day but, we do know he is with a very loving foster family and I'm sure they made it special.





Some Korean Bday Celebration customs....

Korean first birthdays celebrations are called a Tol. They are usually large celebrations. The traditional Tol has four major parts....



*Making and wearing the birthday clothes or tol-bok



*Prayers, blessing and giving thanks



* Toljabee--where the child predicts his future by choosing amongst various objects placed in front of him. Some of the common items include a needle and thread [symbolizes a long life], a book [symbolizes a scholar], some sort of currency [symbolizing prosperity], a rice cake [he will never go hungry]



*Sharing of food


We received some great books about Korean Culture and Travel for Christmas. We are both really enjoying reading them.... so much fun and so very interesting. Can't wait to see it all in person in 2011!
Happy New Year!