Thursday, November 27, 2008

You have to watch this!!

I know I already posted today, but I just saw this video on Yahoo and I loved it so much that I had to share it. I'm such an animal lover, this video made me cry!! (I'm also a big crybaby.:))

(darn, I can't get the video to play in the post for some reason. If it won't play for you and you want to watch it (trust me, you do!) try clicking on this link to see it: http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?cl=10849410)


Giving thanks

We just got done eating our Thanksgiving turkey and our tummies are full! Before I lay down on the couch to watch a movie and promptly fall asleep I thought I'd better blog before I let the day go by!

Today has been a good day. Most days around here are pretty good, but today was especially good. We didn't have any company for Thanksgiving and we didn't go out of town like we normally do, so it was just us. For the past few weeks I've been feeling kind of bummed about that, because I actually really like big family Thanksgivings, but today with just our little family sitting around the table talking about what we're thankful for, my heart was full. I love our sweet little family. I love sitting at the table laughing and talking with our kids and sitting next to my sweet husband. Life is good.

So while we were eating we had the annual "tell us what you're thankful for" discussion and it was fun to hear from the kids. Matthew is thankful for Heavenly Father and Jesus, our family, Santa and all the people in our neighborhood. Josh is thankful for our family, our church, our pets and his friends.

Today I feel like I have so many things to be thankful for thatI don't really even know where to start. So here is my very imcomplete list of things that I'm thankful for.

I'm thankful for my kids, who make me smile every single day. I couldn't ask for better kids. They are such a blessing in my life.

I'm thankful for my husband, who is always there for me, always understands me and happily puts up with me, even when I'm a little difficult to live with, which is often. :)

I'm thankful for our church. Without it my life would be very different.

I'm thankful for Clarissa's birth mother. Somewhere out there there is a woman hurting for her baby right now and my heart breaks for her. I hope that I can raise her daughter to be the kind of person that she would want her to be.

I'm thankful for whoever is keeping Clarissa warm and safe right now. I couldn't help thinking as we were eating our Thanksgiving dinner today there there was someone missing from our table. I'm thankful for kind people in the world who take babies into their lives and love them, even knowing that they'll eventally have to give them up.

I'm thankful for my friends, the old ones and the new ones. I've learned something from each and every one of them.

I'm thankful for the birds in my tree. Nature is amazing and God has given us beautiful things to look at and enjoy.

I'm thankful that I live in a free country, where I'm free to live and worship as I choose, whether people agree with me or not.

I'm thankful for green grass, warm blankets, good books, ducks who lay eggs in my yard, rainy days and all the other simple pleasures in life.

I'm also thankful for a million other things that I don't have the time to name right now. Life is good.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Back from Twilight!

I've been waiting for this weekend for quite a while; it was the opening weekend of the movie Twilight!

We trade date night babysitting with some friends of ours, so we arranged to have the kids go play at their house for a while today so that we could go see the movie. We got there an hour early and there was already a line forming! I love the excitement at the theater when big movies open. We've waited in line on opening weekend for all the Harry Potter movies, the Star Wars movies and a few others. It's fun to be in the theater with all the really die hard fans. There was actually a preview for the new Harry Potter movie at the beginning of Twilight and apparently the Twilight crowd is also the Harry Potter crowd because everyone clapped and cheered at the preview. I love that. It's fun to feel like everyone in the theater is all in on the excitement together.

So anyway, the movie was awesome and I already can't wait to see it again. I really applaud Stephanie Meyer for writing a story that is so clean. It's nice to see a movie that isn't full of language and sex. Movies like that are unfortunately becoming harder to find these days. I think the fact that Edward and Bella can't really be together is way more romantic and exciting that if it had just gone like most movies and there were in bed in the first hour.

I thought they did a great job with the casting! When I first heard that they were making a movie from the book I thought that there was no way that they were going to find anyone who could play Edward and be as stunning and perfect as they described in the book. I was wrooong, they found a perfect Edward! Is it wrong to be 33 years old and have a crush on Edward Cullen?? :)

So that was our fun afternoon at the movies. When we came out of the theater it was raining and by the time we got home it was snowing! Now that we've hit November I'm totally ready for the snow. I love it when we're home on the weekend and it's all cold and snowy outside. I'll take any excuse I can to turn the fireplace on and curl up in a blanket. I'm thinking that today might be a good day to start rereading the Twilight books!

Friday, November 21, 2008

ONE YEAR!!!

Today is November 21st and we have now officially been waiting for Clarissa for one year. November 21st last year was the day our paperwork went to Korea and we were officially put on the waiting list.

We've officially been waiting one year but we actually started our adoption journey many months before that. I think that it was about May or June of last year that we finally made the decision to look into adoption and we started requesting info from agencies. I think that it was around July that we settled on Korea, paid the application fee with our agency and got the ball rolling.

The application process to adopt internationally is brutal. It's an incredible amount of paperwork and other hoops that must be jumped. Doctor exams, background checks, social worker visits, papers that have to be notarized...it seemed like that part of it went on forever.

So even though I'm celebrating our official one year wait today, the wait has technically been more like a year and a half. Frankly, it SEEMS like it's been more like 36 decades. It's been so long that I can barely remember the days when we WEREN'T waiting anymore. It seems like this has just always been an ongoing process.

But today is a good day. I remember last November 21st, wondering where we'd be this November 21st, and now here we are. And really, as I look back over the past year, not a lot has changed. Maybe this year has been the calm before the storm! The past several years of our lives have brought a lot of changes to our home and our family, but this past year was actually fairly uneventful. We took some fun little vacations and had a lot of great family time, but not much changed in our lives this year. I'm glad for that actually. The previous three years were literally just a whirlwind of change and a fair amount of stress accompanying it. It was nice to kind of sit back this year and enjoy our family and look forward to the changes ahead of us.

So now I wonder what we'll be doing next November 21st. By next November Clarissa should be getting settled into our family and hopefully the adoption stress will be mostly behind us. This time next year there will be dolls on my Christmas shopping list! This time next year we probably will have just celebrated Clarissa's first birthday and I hope that we'll be finishing up the requirements to have the adoption finalized with the courts. This time next year I'll be taking a family Christmas photo and I'll finally not be left with the feeling that someone is missing.

I have so much hope and excitement for the year ahead. This adoption has really consumed my life for such a long time now and I'm so excited about the adventure ahead. I hope that this time next year we'll be moving on to the next phase of our lives, happy and content, blessed with three beautiful children. I look forward to the day when this blog and this journey to adoption becomes just another chapter in the book of my life. One day it will be fun to look back on all of this and remember this year and all that we went through to bring Clarissa home.

So here we are, one year older, one year wiser and one year closer to Clarissa. If I can get through a year I can get through the next 4-6 months until we can finally see a picture of sweet Clarissa and then finally hold her in our arms. The wait is winding down and I have nothing but excitement for what is to come.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Tuesday Update

I talked to the lady handling our adoption at our adoption agency today and I got some information that I thought I'd update you on.

Right now we're #8 in line with our agency. What that means is that there are seven families ahead of us, but that doesn't necessarily mean that those seven families have to be matched with a baby before it's our turn. When a baby is ready for adoption, they look at the profile of family #1 first and if their profile doesn't match the baby's situation then they look at family #2 and so on until they feel that they have the best family for the baby. For instance if family #1 has requested a girl and the next baby available is a boy, they'll skip the first family and look at the second family. Sometimes the birth mother requests a family of a certain religion or sometimes the baby has a health issue that needs to be matched up with a family able to handle it, etc. So it doesn't necessarily mean that we're 8 babies away from being matched.

But what that DOES mean is that we're getting closer!! Our agency gets an average of two referrals from Korea a month. Sometimes as many as five and some months none. The bad news is that January and February are their notorious slow months and that's right when we're going to be close to the top of the list. So I'm betting that we won't hear anything until March. Maybe sooner, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up. It's still sooner than we originally thought it would be, so I'm happy. :)

The other thing I'm really excited about is that I think there's a bigger chance that we're going to take the leap and actually travel to Korea!!! One of the things holding us back was the cost. This adoption is costing us an absolute fortune and we just weren't sure that we were going to be able to pay the extra cost to travel. But when I was talking to the agency today she said that it's actually not that much more to travel than it is to have Clarissa escorted to the US!

It will cost us about $2,500 if we have Clarissa escorted. That covers the airfare for Clarissa and the escort and whatever other fees they deem necessary. If we fly it will probably cost us about $2,500 total for airfare for Shawn and I (we won't be taking the boys), and then all that's left is food and lodging. We only have to go for three days and there is a guest house at the Korean adoption agency that we can stay in for $28 a night as long as it's not being used, which is SUPER cheap, and then food prices are about the same as they are here.

So it will cost a little more for us to travel than to escort, but not so much more that it's out of our price range or anything. It's still totally doable! The more we talked about it the more it seemed like the way to go. Plus she said that escorting takes longer than travelling to pick up the baby. If we travel we can go as soon as all the paperwork is complete. If we escort we have to wait for them to find someone to escort her, which can take anytime from a week to a month to arrange! I think by the time the paperwork is done and she's free to leave Korea I'm going to be climbing the walls waiting to go get her. Another month would be unbearable torture.

That DOES mean that I have to take the big scary flight though. Fifteen hours over the ocean!! That scares the crap out of me! Here's what I do when I'm on an airplane. I sit in my seat with my nails dug into Shawn's arm, just waiting for the plane to crash at any moment. Even the slightest turbulence signals certain death, I'm just sure of it. And then when we finally land I'm always pleasantly surprised that I'm still alive. :) I've flown several times. I've flown to Las Vegas, Orlando, Memphis, California, and when I was 19 I was a nanny in New Jersey and I flew back and forth between New Jersey and Idaho several times. I tolerate it when I have to. I absolutely love being on vacation and I love going to new places. It's just the getting there and getting home that I hate, and when you live in Idaho you pretty much have to fly to go anywhere because we're too far away from anywhere interesting to drive.

But flying halfway across the world is different than flying across the country! I've never been out of the country before and I've never flown over the ocean. The only way I even sort of tolerate flying is because I know that at least there's a possibility of making an emergency landing if we have to. But there's no emergency landings in the ocean! The thought of that many hours in the air over water seriously panics me. I think the second I get on the plane I'm going to take a large dose of Benedryl and I'm going to attempt to sleep for 15 hours. :)

If this is what I have to do to get Clarissa into my arms ASAP, then I'm going to do it. Everyone I know who has traveled to Korea to get their baby says it's the greatest experience ever. So I can do it, right? Thank you to the two commenters in my last post who encouraged me to fly. It helped! It probably won't kill me right? How often do planes crash in a blazing ball of fire into the ocean?

Every single night I lay in bed trying to imagine where Clarissa is and who is with her. What a great experience it will be to actually go there and find out for myself. Meeting her foster parents and getting to explore Korea a little bit will be an absolute amazing experience.

And who knows, maybe between now and next summer someone will create a teleporting device and airplanes will become obsolete. It could happen, right?! :) Ok, maybe not. I'll just have to suck it up and fly.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Korean update

OK, so I'm on day four of learning Korean. Rosetta Stone does NOT start out slow! So I feel a little overwhelmed with it right now, but in theory I totally agree with the immersion method. I spend my entire lesson learning in Korean, there's no time wasted listening to someone speak to me in English. I am learning a lot though and I think that once I get further into the program I'm going to start retaining more and more of it. I estimate that if I go at a normal pace and really work at it, I should be able to finish the program in six months. In six months I hope that we're getting ready to get Clarissa home. If I really DO learn to speak Korean enough to get by, it might be the big push I need to actually make the trip to Korea instead of having Clarissa escorted to the US. My heart is telling me to go to Korea, but my brain is telling me that I'm too scared to fly to handle a 15 hour flight over the ocean. Fifteen hours! We're going to Memphis in the spring and I'm already panicking about the five hour flight, and it's a flight I've taken before. We flew there last February and I survived. I don't know why I'm convinced that I can't do it again. Every second on an airplane is torture for me.

BUT I'm in love with the idea of actually getting to go to Korea. To meet Clarissa's foster mother and to be able to tell Clarissa later all about where she came from is important to me. Plus I've just fallen in love with Korea through everything I've read and seen lately. It seems like a beautiful place that I really do want to visit.

So we'll see. I change my mind about it daily and it's still months away. When the time comes, we'll see who wins, my brain or my heart!

Friday, November 14, 2008

"The Classic" soundtrack

So aside from The Classic being the best movie ever, it also has the best soundtrack ever! I've added a little music player to the side of my blog and if you click the play button it will play a song from the soundtrack. I'm not completely clear on the name of the song because I've seen it translated a few different ways. The name on the track I found on the esnips.com website listed it as "More Love...", but on the lyric translation site I read it listed it as "If We Are in Love, Then..." so I don't know what it's called exactly.

I decided not to make it automatically play when you open my blog because I know that's annoying, but you have to promise to listen to it at least once, because it's an absolutely beautiful song!

Here are the translated lyrics, which make more sense once you see the movie!

As I appear over the top of the hill you see me
I don't need to speak, you already know what's on my mind
Without ever knowing why we came to be together as if just by chance
I won't change my mind just as a rainbow doesn't stop until it reaches the heavens

If we are in love we shouldn't worry about our hearts becoming lonely or broken
I just believe that this is not the end
So lately I've woken up to the fact that love can't be denied
It seemed like you came to me by chance but I know that it was fate that brought us together
If we are in love we shouldn't be afraid of anything pulling us apart
I just believe that this is not the end
This is not the end...

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Five things I learned on Thursday

1. Korean is a hard language to learn.

2. Josh can cram an amazingly large amount of junk in his closet to give his room the appearance of being clean.

3. Donuts make a really great bribe for an 8 year old and a 5 year old.

4. Tonights episode of The Office wasn't all that funny, but Pam's back from New York! Yay!

5. I don't care if Korean is hard. I'm going to learn it anyway.

So there.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Afternoon update

I spent about two hours learning Korean today! Rosetta Stone is a pretty cool program. It is a complete immersion program, they don't teach you anything in English. They want you to figure everything out in Korean from the very start. So they're not just having you memorize common phrases or anything like that, they want you to really learn the how's and why's of the whole language. After two hours this morning I can now tell you in Korean all about how the the boy eats dinner, the boy reads a book, the girl runs and the girl drinks water. Oh yeah, I rock. :)

When I first started I felt like I was totally in over my head, but it ended up not being as hard to understand as I thought because of the really great way they teach it. The hardest part was pronouncing some of the sounds. My mouth doesn't make some Korean sounds! It has voice recognition software, so you have to repeat words and they'll tell you if you're saying it right or wrong. I was OK for the most part, but there were a few sounds that I just can't make. To ME it sounded like I was saying what they were saying, but I guess not. It's tricky.

I'm excited to keep practicing though! I'm sure it will take me months to learn enough to even feel comfortable with a very basic conversation, but I'm up for the challenge.

And then I got the mail today and I was very excited to find that a t-shirt that I ordered online from a Korean store came today! It's just a while t-shirt that says The Republic of Korea in Korean on the front and there's a Korean flag on the back. It sounds stupid, but the reason I ordered it is because it actually ships straight from Korea! To get it in the mail today knowing that a few days ago it was actually in Korea was oddly exciting. I'm such a nerd. I just wanted something that came from Korea. Not a Korean t-shirt from an American store, but a Korean shirt that really came from Korea. For some reason anything Korean just makes me feel closer to Clarissa these days. It's like if Korea becomes a real place to me then Clarissa becomes a real person who lives there. That probably doesn't make sense, but it's working for me. It's making the wait easier.

ahn nyeong ha se yo

Ok, I've finally done it. I ordered Rosetta Stone and as of today I am officially learning to speak Korean.

Ever since I became so interested in Korean music and movies, it's driven me crazy that I can't understand it. I LOVE Korean culture and I think the language is beautiful. S0 this morning I decided to take the plunge and attempt to learn to speak at least basic Korean. I figure if we do end up going to Korea to pick up Clarissa, I'm guessing that it will be in 6-8 months from now. If I practiced a lot for the next 6-8 months, maybe I'd be able to carry on a very basic conversation with Clarissa's foster mother and at least ask strangers how to get to the bus stop, right?!

I'm going to give it a try. I love to learn new things and I think this will be a fun adventure. I'll keep you posted on my progress! Wish me luck!

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Cry your eyes out, part 2

Ok, I totally take back what I said on Friday about Ditto being the best movie ever. I just watched another Korean movie called The Classic, and that is my NEW very favorite movie ever.

You absolutely MUST watch that movie! I cried my eyes out for the last 15 minutes of it, but it's just a fantastic movie with a beautiful ending. Koreans know how to make a movie, I can't believe I've been missing out on them all this time!

So go find The Classic on DVD or watch it online at http://www.veoh.com/. It's the most beautiful love story ever, but it will totally break your heart.

Nothing new at the White house

I haven't posted for a few days because I can't think of anything to post about. It's actually been really boring around here lately!

I did go to the dentist this morning for my six month checkup. I've been looking forward to this day for the past six months because I remember when I made the appointment back in May the first thing I thought was that the next time I had to go to the dentist we'd be a lot closer to the adoption being done. And now here we are and we ARE a lot closer the the adoption being done! Yay! I made my next six month appointment today. I go back in May. I wonder what will be happening the next time I go to the dentist. Maybe by some miracle I'll have to reschedule it because we'll be picking up Clarissa! At the very least I should have photos of her by then and a pretty good idea of when she'll be home. I can't WAIT to go back to the dentist! :)

A friend of mine who is adopting domestically just found out this weekend that they've been picked by a birth mother and they have a son due in six weeks! I'm so happy for their family. They already have two adopted sons, so I think one more boy will fit right in. The more I am around adoptive families and the more I see how much adoption blesses so many people's lives the more sure I am of our decision to adopt. It really is a wonderful thing.

I tend to have a lot of ups and downs about the whole adoption process. Sometimes I'm just super excited to think about her getting here and I enjoy thinking about what it will be like, and other times I'm just really tired of waiting and the more I think about it the harder it is to wait. Knowing that she's probably been born and is out there being taken care of by someone else is hard. I think we all have our own ideas of how our kids should be taken care of when they're newborns, and it's hard to know that I don't have any say in that.

Is she being held enough? Are they singing to her and giving her pretty music to listen to? Are they creating good sleep habits for her? Are they talking to her and smiling at her and loving her to pieces the way I would if she were here? I hope so. I've never heard a single bad thing about Korean foster parents. They really are wonderful people. I just wish I could be there for her first bath and her first smile. I wish I could be with her for her first Christmas. I probably won't get to see the first time she sits up by herself, hear her first word or watch her crawl for the first time. That's hard. Knowing I have a child out there that I can't see or touch is a weird feeling. I feel a connection to her even though I don't know who she is yet. I just feel like someone is missing from our family and someone is missing from my life.

The time will come. One of these days I'm going to be rocking her to sleep and kissing her face and hearing her call me mom. That will be a really good day.

Friday, November 7, 2008

In the mood for a good cry??

Wow. Part of my Korean obsession has been watching Korean movies. So far I love Korean movies, the few that I've seen are just beautiful and sweet.

I had a few hours to kill this afternoon so I thought I'd find a movie to watch. I picked a Korean movie that I found on the internet called Ditto. It's in Korean (obviously) with English subtitles.

It was an absolutely AMAZING movie, so beautiful, but it's been over for a while now and I still haven't managed to stop bawling about it. It's kind of about life not turning out the way you thought it would, and since that was once quite a theme in my life, maybe it hit a little too close to home.

But it seriously is one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen. The whole thing was just amazing. I'm going to see if I can track it down on the internet somewhere with English subtitles and buy it. It's just THAT beautiful.

So if you're in the mood to bawl your eyes out for an afternoon, you absolutely MUST see it. Even if you're not a fan of movies with subtitles, try it anyway.

I found the movie on http://www.veoh.com/. They have it there in three pieces, but there might be somewhere else on the internet where you can watch it all in one piece.

Here's a clip of it from the veoh website. There should be a link in the clip where you can go to watch the whole movie. You might have to download a little player, but I did it and it was fine.


Watch Ditto 1/3 in Entertainment Videos  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

It made me bawl my eyes out, but it also made me want to watch it again! I'm off to see if I can find a website to buy it on!

UPDATE! I found the DVD here for $10. www.dvdasian.com/_e/Korea/product/17957/Ditto.htm

Feeling better today!

First of all, let me just say that I have the most wonderful husband ever. I was having a crappy day yesterday and I was just feeling really down. I'm so grateful to have a husband who knows everything to say and do to make me feel better. He's thoughtful and sweet and I love him.

Second, last night was Office night. I love The Office every week, but last nights episode was just really really funny. So just in case you haven't yet discovered the fabulousness which is The Office, I bring you a clip from last nights show.

Let me set it up for you in case you're not ridiculously obsessed with The Office like some people. (me.)

Here we have Dwight (Rainn Wilson, with the glasses), Michael (Steve Carrell) and Jim (the television love of my life). Dwight is really kind of dimwitted and he annoys Jim constantly, so Jim likes to pick on him and Dwight is generally too dumb to get that he's being picked on. Jim is really sarcastic and funny (and if I haven't mentioned it, the televison love of my life).

Michael is their boss, who is also really really clueless.

Dwight and Jim are paper salesmen and last night they got customer surveys back that were not exactly complimentary to them. (which was later found to be false, which is a different story.) So anyway, Michael decided that they needed to role play a sales call to see if he could help them improve.

And here we have the role play. I've watched the episode three times already and this cracks me up every single time. (By the way, did I mention that Jim is the television love of my life? :))



And there you have it. One of the millions of ridiculously funny scenes from my favorite show. If you're not a faithful watcher, you're totally missing out!

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Cure for a bad day

I'm really not in a very good mood today, so here's what I'm going to do about it.

First, I'm going to share my favorite silly video with you. If you have cats you'll think it's hysterical. If not, just humor me. :)


Kitty Wake Up - Amazing videos are here


Second, I'm going to go to the store, buy some chips and salsa and I'm going to park myself on the big chair in my bedroom, read a book and eat my chips and salsa. There is a series of books by an LDS author, Dean Hughes about a family during WWII that I LOVE. I haven't read them in a while so I think I'm going to start from the beginning and read them all again. (although obviously not all today since they're gigantic books!)

So today I'll be taking a personal leave of absence from life. We're all entitled to one of those every now and then, right?

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Why I love my boys

I was just reading through my blog and it occurred to me that I talk a lot about how excited I am about Clarissa joining our family, but I don't mention my boys nearly enough. So here's an entire post dedicated to how crazy in love I am with my sweet boys.

Josh was a happy surprise in our lives. Shawn was going to pharmacy school at the time, I was working to pay the bills and like most college students, we were barely keeping our heads above water. So when I found out that I was pregnant with Josh, it threw us for a loop at first. I was so scared through that pregnancy. I was scared to give birth, scared to be a mom, scared about how we we were going to afford it...that pregnancy was rough. We knew that it was going to change our lives in a big way.

But what we didn't know at the time is that it was going to change our lives in the best way ever. There's just no way to describe the feeling when they put that baby in your arms for the first time. I immediately went from being scared to just being in complete awe. There was this perfect little child, and he didn't care if we didn't have enough money or if I didn't know what I was doing at first.

We named him Joshua Dennis. Joshua, I'm embarrassed to say, after a character on Friends! When I was pregnant and trying to pick a name, I watched an episode of Friends where Rachel was dating someone named Joshua and she kept saying his name over and over with such flair that for some reason it stuck in my head. Joshua. I love that name.

His middle name is my dads name. My dad died of cancer when I was 20. He never got to meet any of his grandkids and I know that he would have loved them so much. My dad would have been such a proud grandpa. So since he couldn't be here in person, I wanted Josh to carry on his name so that he could always be with us in spirit.

Josh has always been a unique kid. Anyone who knows him knows what I'm talking about!! Josh's first word when he was about 9 months old was hi. We would go to the grocery store and he would sit in the cart and wave to everyone and say hi like he was grand marshall of a parade. We would make friends everywhere we went! He's now 8 and that really hasn't changed.

Josh is Mr. Personality. He wants to meet everyone, he loves everyone and everyone is his new best friend. The kid LOVES to talk. He will talk to everyone. We joke that he starts talking to moment he wakes up, he talks all day and he talks in his sleep. You can always learn something new from him and I love it.

Josh is also freakishly smart. When he was two he was obsessed with the alphabet and by three had taught himself to read. People are constantly asking me how I got him to read so early. Honestly, I couldn't have stopped him if I'd wanted to. When he was three he used to take Shawn's huge medical books to bed and look at them before he went to sleep. When he was four he started writing stories. We have a huge binder of all the stories he's written over the years and they're priceless. At six he asked me what an autobiography was and when I told him he went to work writing his. It's currently 22 pages long and he adds to it occasionally.

He's extremely curious about life, he asks a million questions a day, and if I don't know the answer he'll find out himself. He loves computers and he loves to build things. The other day he told me that when he grows up he's going to be an architect during the day and he's going to write books and comics at home. I told him to go for it. He also loves to make movies. He has a digital camera with video capability and he's constantly making movies for us. They're awesome!

Josh is also extremely sensitive and kind. He's incredibly soft hearted. He inherited my love of animals, which is something we like to bond over. He helps me identify the birds in the tree, we've had a good time watching the birds together. Josh and I have so much in common that it's almost freaky. He keeps track of all the things we have in common and he's always excited when he discovers a new one. He's my little buddy and I love it.

Josh is just an amazing kid. We're so lucky to have him in our family. I could go on for weeks about what a truly amazing person he is. I look back and remember how scared I was before he was born and it makes me smile now. I had no idea what a blessing he was going to be.

When Josh was two we decided he needed a sibling and after being surprised that it wasn't as easy to get pregnant the second time around, we were excited when we finally found out that we were pregnant with Matthew.

Matthew had a really scary entry into the world. It's a long story that you probably don't want to hear, but the short version is that the cord prolapsed and I was rushed into emergency surgery. It was horribly scary at the time. There was no time to give me an epidural so I had to be put under completely and Shawn had to wait in the hall. So while I'm sure Matthews birth was as wonderful and miraculous as Josh's, I'll have to take the nurses word for it, because I didn't get to witness it.

What I do remember is waking up an hour later to the nurse telling me that I had a son with blond hair. My first thought in my half asleep state was that she must be talking to someone else. How did we create a blond child??

I don't know, but we did and he was beautiful from the first moment I saw him. Josh was small and felt so fragile when he was born, but not Matthew! He was 8lbs 1oz of solid baby!

We named him Matthew Thomas. To be honest, I don't even remember anymore how Matthew's first name came to be. I think we kicked around several names early in my pregnancy and the second we said Matthew it just instantly became his name. He's just always been Matthew. I can't imagine him being anything else!

Since we used a middle name from my family for Josh we decided to use a name from Shawn's family for Matthew's middle name. We looked through his family history and found Thomas White, Shawn's great-great grandfather who had a really great life story, so we decided to use Thomas as Matthews middle name. And actually, it never occurred to me until later, but Thomas White is actually Clarissa's son! (It's also her husbands name, actually, but we specifically named Matthew after the son.)

Ever since Matthew was born we've called him our little ray of sunshine. Matthew is the most easy going kid ever to walk the Earth. He doesn't care what's going on in life, he's just happy to be along for the ride. He gentle and kind and patient and happy. He's also hysterically funny!

There are so many things I love about Matthew. He's always got a smile on his face and he's always up for whatever is going on around here. He's a good sibling to Josh. Josh likes to take charge of life and whatever is going on in it and Matthew is happy to accommodate. We used to call Matthew The Shadow. Wherever Josh was, Matthew was two steps behind. It still is that way, actually. We've just stopped using the name.

Matthew is much more physical than Josh. Josh doesn't like sports much, but I think Matthew is going to be our athlete. He can kick all our behinds in Wii Fit! He loves to run and be outside and pretend to be a superhero saving the world from the bad guys. He saves us from bad guys many times a day here. Thank goodness for Matthew. :) Matthew is Shawn's Star Wars buddy, and Shawn LOOOVES it. :) They've bonded over light sabers and Luke Skywalker many times.

I know that everyone thinks it about their own kids, but I have really great kids! I'm still in awe of them every single day. They're funny and smart and sweet and I just never knew that I could love anyone so much. They're a blessing to me every single day.

We've talked a lot with them about what it's going to be like to have a new baby in the house and they're so excited about it! They're loving learning about Korea and they're looking forward to their little sister. I have no doubt that they're going to love her to pieces and be wonderful big brothers.

So there you go, everything you ever wanted to know about Josh and Matthew. I am so lucky to be their mom and I can't wait for the day that Clarissa joins us and makes our family complete.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

I hope it gets fixed

In honor of the election, I bring you my absolute favorite SNL election related clip ever. I've only watched this...oh, about 100 times now. :)

(it's the end of the clip that I like so much, so you'll have to pardon the commercial and the beginning part. I couldn't find a clip of just the end. It gets funny, I promise!)

Monday, November 3, 2008

Mothers

It's 2:30am in Korea right now.

Somewhere out there there is a foster mother watching over our sweet little Clarissa as she sleeps. I wonder if she gave her a warm bath tonight. I wonder if Clarisssa was rocked to sleep and sung a lullaby. I wonder if there is someone there to smell her sweet baby smell and snuggle with her and make her smile. I hope that she's warm, I hope that she's safe and I hope that she feels loved.

Somewhere out there there is also a birth mother, grieving for the baby she couldn't keep. I wonder if she's lying in bed right know wondering who is taking care of her baby, just like I am. I don't know why she chose to place her for adoption, and I don't know if I'll ever know, but I do know that she must be hurting right now. I hope that she has peace. I hope that there is someone there to hug her and tell her that it's going to be OK. I wish that she could know how loved Clarissa already is and how much I will always appreciate her special gift. Clarissa will be raised not to think of her birth mother as the woman who gave her away, but the woman who loved her so much that wanted more for Clarissa than she was able to give.

In Idaho it's 10:30am.

I'm sitting on my bed right now wondering about the future. I wonder what Clarissa will look like. I wonder if she'll struggle with being adopted. I wonder if she'll ever fully understand how much she was loved and wanted from the moment she was born. I wonder what she'll be when she grows up. What talents will she carry on from her birth family? I wonder if she'll be a princess who loves pink or a tomboy who catches bugs, like I was. I wonder if she'll love to read or dance or draw. I wonder what it will feel like to finally have her here, in my arms, knowing that she's finally ours forever.

Three mothers. We may never meet but we've all got the same sweet little girl in our hearts today.

The time is now 10:44. I'm 14 minutes closer to having sweet Clarissa in my arms.