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!