Gabeisms

Gabe's middle name is Isaac. Isaac means "he laughs." Though we couldn't have known when we chose that name, it is an absolutely perfect name for him. Every single day he makes us laugh. I wanted to share and record a few of the most recent most hilarious Gabe moments...

Pregnant?!?!?
About a week ago at dinner Gabe says he is going to marry Abby. He then goes on to say that she is going to be pregnant. After the word pregnant comes out of his mouth Phil and I share one of those deer in headlights looks as our minds race to figure out how exactly to address this. I am thinking that we had just before dinner been watching Ice Age 3 Dawn of the Dinosaur. This is relevant because Ellie the mammoth is pregnant in that movie. I am thinking that the movie is certainly where he got the word and the idea. I also assume that he doesn't fully understand what being pregnant means. Before either Phil or I can say anything Abby responds that she doesn't have to be (pregnant). Gabe then says, "Oh you will be pregnant." Phil then jumps in with the old stand-by of "Let's talk about something else." I also add that you can't marry your sister. Abby then says, "what is there like a law or something." "Yes actually there is," is my response. That ended the marriage pregnant conversation for the evening for which we were glad.

Luke Skywalker
Grandma Patt was with Gabe at school Mass this week for V.I.P. day. When it came to the gospel reading and Fr. Don said, "The gospel according to Luke," Gabe said to Grandma..."That's not Luke Skywalker, I already know that." Grandma Patt says she will never hear the gospel of Luke the same way again.

Hyenas or Scar
Tonight at dinner out of the blue Gabe was raising his hand to be called on. Once Phil called on Gabe he asked this question, "Dad, would you rather road trip with the hyenas or scar?" Tough choice....funny boy.

Family Day 2011

April 29th is Ellie's family day. Some people also call this airplane day or gotcha day. It is the day we officially landed in Rochester with Ellie and became a family of 5! Our lives have been forever changed for the better by the addition of Eliana Yeong Ah to our family. And if not for this fateful day in 2009 we would not be anxiously awaiting our next addition, Ellie's little sister!

We celebrated the day by making bulgogi, a korean beef dish and rice.

We ate with chopsticks!

We got silly in our handboks!

Ellie is so smart and funny. She is incredibly passionate or at least some day she will be. At the age of two passion looks a lot more like feistiness. But even in someone so young it is a trait to be admired. There is NOTHING luke warm about this child, she is either hot or cold. She is very interested in learning and knows how to spell and write her name. She is very musical and often plays the piano while singing. She also belts out the hymns at church and gets a lot of attention for knowing all the words.

This picture was taken on Ellie's first day home two years ago.

What a difference two years makes. My, how they all have grown.

A little bit of catching up....

I need to do a little catching up on the blog. While a piece of me says I should just get current and stay current there are some big spring events for us that are not to be missed including family day for Ellie and First Communion for Abby. So I plan to catch up even if the blog gets a little out of order.

One other note...I reported that we received a blank CD from Charlie's foster family but that wasn't true. The CD actually had pictures and VIDEO! We got see Charlie cruising around furniture and saying some words. Technology is so wonderful.

Bad News and Good Pictures

Last Friday we received some very disappointing news from our adoption agency. The agency has received information about the number of emigration permits that the Ministry in Korea is going to give the adoption agencies in Korea. Charlotte must have an emigration permit to leave the country. There are not enough emigration permits this year for Charlotte to come home. The soonest we will be able to travel to bring her home is February of 2012. We are heartbroken. Charlotte will be at least 21 months old by the time she joins our family. We are so sad to miss another 9 months of her life.

Some good news though is that we received some pictures of Charlotte from Eastern. The first two pictures below were taken at Eastern during a well child check. Charlotte was given the care package from us and is pictured with some of the things we sent.

The other photos arrived from Charlotte's foster family! Another care package from them was such a welcome gift. We got some more pictures of Charlotte and some gifts for the kids. Inexplicably they sent another blank CD. We really hope that they don't think that they are sending us pictures on there when they aren't. We will do what we did with the last blank CD and fill it with pictures and videos of our family and send it back to them.

Enjoy the pictures of our beautiful little girl.

She is crawling on the blanket we sent to her and wearing the outfit we sent.

Charlie seems to like the little musical toy we sent. I will have to look for more musical toys for the next package.

I LOVE this picture. She looks so happy and I love to see her little teeth!

Charles E. Milkfat

On Tuesday March 22nd, we dared to venture into the place all kids love and all parents fear......that's right we went to Chuck E. Cheese. A Chuck E. Cheese opened in Rochester in December but we had managed to avoid it thus far. I had heard that the pizza was terrible and that it was crazy busy. But being the really cool parents that we are we went there after work/school/daycare one evening. We decided to go on a Tuesday night in the hopes that the crowds would be small. I had a coupon so for the same price would normally spend to have dinner out we got pizza, drinks and 55 tokens! That was enough tokens for a couple hours of fun. Much to our surprise, it wasn't very busy and the pizza was actually pretty good. We had lots of fun and I am sure we will go back.

To Korea with Love...

We sent off a care package to Charlotte this week. It should arrive in Korea on Thursday and hopefully Charlotte will receive it on the 10th when she goes in for her well baby check. It turns out that the adoption world is fairly small and when you narrow it to adoption from South Korea it gets even smaller. We met a family on-line whose son was with the same foster family that Ellie had! This family lives in Illinois and they are traveling to Korea this week to bring home their second son. They graciously offered to take a gift for Charlotte. We are very appreciative and hope to meet this wonderful family in person some day.

We sent an outfit, a little sister t-shirt, a photo album with all of our pictures in it, a recordable story book that phil and I read, a blanket, a musical toy, shoes, socks, and baby wash. We also returned the CD that that Charlie's foster family sent to us and we loaded it up with pictures and video of our family.

The t-shirt we sent says little sister in Korean and in English. We got them for each of the kids and took their pictures in their shirts for the photo album we sent. We thought it would be nice for Charlie's foster family to be able to read the shirts too!

More pictures of Charlotte!!

A most amazing gift....

What one thing (other than a travel call) can set adoptive parents hearts a flutter more than anything else? What one gift is better than Christmas and our birthdays combined?

That one amazing gift arrived in the mail today....a care package from Yeong Eun's (aka Charlotte's) foster family!! This small connection to our daughter who is a half a world a way took this from an ordinary Monday to an extraordinary Monday. It had 10 pictures of Charlotte, 2 dresses, 3 shirts, 2 pairs of pants and hair bows for Ellie. It also had a photo CD that was blank. We don't know if the foster family intended to send us some picture on the CD but didn't or if they meant for us to fill it with pictures for them. It is obvious that Charlotte's foster family is very generous and loving.

We only had two pictures of Charlotte before today. Her referral photo (taken at 5 months) and an updated photo taken at 7 months. It was just amazing to see more of her. She looks SO much like Ellie. She appears very happy and well loved. It looks like she is standing and cruising. We are missing so much. The wait continues to be painful but this wonderful surprise makes the wait just a little more bearable.

I will post some of the pictures. We only have original photos so excuse the quality of these pictures of pictures. I will get the originals scanned in soon.

Oh my gosh, isn't she beautiful? Hurry home sweet girl and be well and safe until you are in our arms.

Gabe's Imagination...

Gabe makes us laugh every day. He is very inquisitive and quite the problem solver. He certainly takes after his Dad. He is VERY much a boy and everything he does is focused on weapons, dinosaurs, Star Wars and ninjas. Every night when we put Gabe to bed he wants us to lay in bed and snuggle with him after we turn out the lights. This is a snippet of the conversation we had two nights ago while snuggling:

Gabe: "After you leave and I am in my room alone, someone comes and knocks on my door. I think it is bad guys so I never answer the door. Dad says it is probably God knocking on my door."

This may have something to do with the fact that Phil has been showing him the Star Wars movies or perhaps the fact that he and Abby are always dressing in black after school so they can play ninja! In any event I told him that no bad guys were going to get past his Momma so he was safe in his room. Oh, how we love our little boy.

It takes a lot of little nuts...

It has been much too long since I have updated this blog. I have no excuse other than to say life with 3 kids is busy! Much has happened since I last posted....most importantly we are in the adoption process again! We are going to be a family of 6! As I often tell the children....it takes a lot of little nuts to make one jar of peanut butter. We are so excited to be adding another little nut to our jar!

On November 9, 2010 we received a call from our agency telling us that Ellie has a sister in Korea who had been placed for adoption. They wanted to know if we were willing to adopt her. It didn't take us long to say YES and the madness began again. We rushed through home study paper work and criminal background checks. We were finally able to send our acceptance to Korea on January 28, 2011. Now the hard part begins...we WAIT. When we adopted Ellie in 2009 we waited about 3 months between sending our acceptance to Korea and traveling to get her. Our adoption agency now tells us we may have to wait up to 11 months to travel to bring our daughter home.

We have decided to name our new daughter Charlotte Yeong Eun. Yeong Eun is her Korean name. We plan to call her Charlie (everyone at our house has a nickname) but we can't decide how to spell it (Charli, Charlie, Charley, Charlee). Oh well, it seems we have lots of time to debate the spelling issue. Charlotte was born on June 10, 2010 ( a summer birthday just like the rest of the kids). She is 8 1/2 months old. Not seeing her for another 10 months and missing all of her babyhood seems unbearable to us. Today I shopped for things to send to Korea for Charlotte. I loved buying the little girl clothes but it also made me sad knowing I am not the one who will dress her in those clothes. If you have the time and the inclination please pray that she can come home to her family soon.

Otherwise life at the Germann house is good. The children are growing, learning, laughing and loving....and we are loving every minute of it. I won't say we don't get tired or that we don't have our struggles but generally our life is amazing. We are so blessed by the tiny humans who live in our house. Every day they amaze us with their intelligence and imaginations. They make us laugh and they love us and each other. What more could we ask for really?

I am vowing to be better about documenting our lives here. I am not great at keeping up baby books and the adventures of the Germann family should be recorded somewhere for posterity.