Saturday, May 30, 2009

Today is a better day

I was really really down last night. There's been a bunch of things going on in my head lately and I've just been really discouraged. Thanks to a lot of prayer and a husband who will go across town to get me my favorite cheesecake, I'm feeling much better today.

I decided to stop focusing so much on the family member that isn't here yet and spend the weekend enjoying the ones I've already got. So last night we had a campout in the basement and today we took the kids to see the movie Up.

Ok seriously, if you haven't seen the movie Up, you must go see it right this very minute! I generally don't get super excited about Disney cartoon movies. I don't mind seeing them with the kids because it's always fun to take them to a movie and they love it, but it's not something I usually jump up and down with excitement about. But today I wanted to do something that would be fun for the kids and something we could do as a family, so we headed off to the movies.

I expected it to be a cute, lighthearted movie like every other movie we take our kids to, so I was totally surprised when it wasn't what I thought it would be. It is super cute and funny, but it's also really sweet and sad in parts. I started crying in the first 20 minutes of the movie! It's a movie that kids will enjoy because it's funny and it's a movie that parents will enjoy because it's incredibly sweet and there's a deeper lesson to take from it. I'm looking forward to it coming out on DVD because I want to see it again!

I kind of needed a good cry today anyway, so a dark movie theater was a good place for it. :)

I'm spending the rest of the day working on some projects for church and doing some more family bonding. I'm so grateful for my family and for my sweet kids who make me smile. My heart continues to hurt that we're still missing someone, but I'm extremely grateful for two wonderful kids who are already here. I've had to really put this adoption in God's hands and remind myself that He knows what He's doing and will send Clarissa to our family when the time is right. In the meantime there's no point in having a pity party. I'm just going to try harder to enjoy my family and let the adoption work itself out when the time is right.

So there's my much happier update. One way or another I'll get through the rest of this adoption wait and I'll come out stronger in the end.

Friday, May 29, 2009

It's me again with post #3!

Ok, I'm TOTALLY breaking my own rule today, but there is some adoption related stuff that went on this afternoon that I really want to talk about. The problem is that it's kind of a long complicated story and I can't tell you most of it because I'm not allowed to share specifics on other families at the agency or children waiting to be adopted.

So I'll tell you the condensed version and apologize for the fact that I can't give any details and none of it may make any sense.

There was some info in the Friday update that I needed clarification on, so I called the agency. In the course of the conversation I found out that there is still another family ahead of us and that they've been waiting for quite a bit longer than we have.

I didn't realize that. I didn't realize that there was still someone ahead of us and I didn't realize that they have been waiting that much longer than we have.

What does that mean? Well, unfortunately it means that this wait could go on a lot longer than I thought. I know more than I can say (not like there's any shocking information, I'm just not allowed to discuss specifics about other families or their wait), but at this point I'm not expecting the phone to ring with a referal any minute. At this point it would not surprise me if it's another month. It could still happen at any time, but knowing what I know now, I'm not counting on it to be in the next few weeks.

Argh. There's a whole novel of information I would like to pour out right now but I can't and it's frustrating. This is usually my outlet for all things adoption related, and I want to write paragraphs about it, but I can't do that without giving specifics on things that are privacy issues for the agency.

So I'm a little depressed about it at the moment. Actually, I'm kind of a lot depressed. I feel like there's this prize that is always dangling right in front of my face but I can never quite reach it, and everytime I feel like I'm closer someone yanks it back a little further. They're all things that the agency has absolutely no control over, so I know that it's just a matter of continuing to be patient for a while longer, but it's really hard.

I honestly never saw this going past May. I should have prepared myself better for the possibility, but I didn't. I was 100% sure that I would be holding a photo of my baby in my hands by now.

So tonight I'm having a serious pity party. I'm going to eat lemon raspberry cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory (my sure cure depression relieving treat) and I'm going to give myself the evening to pout like a five year old and then I'm going to slap my happy face back on and go back to waiting like a grown up.

My baby is out there. I'm ready when she is.

I officially hate the Friday update

OK, so three hours ago I said that I wouldn't make two posts in the same day unless there was breaking news, and I'm already breaking my rule, but the Friday update just came, which is sort of breaking news, right?

Anyway, there was a referral this week. Another boy, we've been skipped again. I'm oficially entering pity party mode. :(

It's Friday again!

So this week I've learned about Tori Spellings life and Marueen McCormick's life (another good book, by the way) and the phone still has not rung with the referral. I think I'm going to have to find another Hollywood memoir to read.

This afternoon I have a reprieve from the telephone obsessing, since I'm going to a friends house for a while. Although I can guarantee you that I'm going to sit there and mentally obsess over the fact that the phone could be ringing at my house and I'm not going to be there to answer it. The agency has my cellphone number, but still, what if she doesn't call it? What if she calls and leaves a message and by the time I get it she has gone home for the day and I can't call her back until Monday? These are the things that go through my head every waking minute of my day. It's exhausting to be me these days, lol.

I had to giggle yesterday when I got the comments that when I write two posts in a day people are dissapointed because they think the second one is going to be the referral post. It totally sounds like something I would say if I wasn't the one writing the blog! I'm going to try harder not to make two posts a day if the second one isn't breaking news. :)

So this morning I went to the grocery store and they were giving out samples of Alouette spreadable cheese on focaccia sticks, which are basically long crutons. Oh. My. Goodness. I bought some and now I can't stop eating it. The problem is that I bought garlic and herb focaccia sticks and garlic and herb spreadable cheese. I'm going to have to brush my teeth and rinse with Lysterine 50 times before Shawn is ever going to want to kiss me again. It seemed like a good idea at the store...darn free samples.

So that is pretty much life around here today. I have garlic breath, the referral hasn't come, I found out that sweet Marsha Brady was a drug addict (who knew?!) and this afternoon I'm actally going to leave the house (and the phone) for a few hours and attempt to stop obsessing. I have about four more hours to get a referral before the agency closes for the weekend and I'm offficially not getting a referral in May. Let's hope something really exciting happens in the next four hours! :)

Thursday, May 28, 2009

A hammock, a book, lemonade and sunshine...

Four ingredients to a pretty great afternoon.

Another day, another book

OK, so yesterday I read Tori Spellings book to get me through a long day of waiting for the phone to ring. I read the whole thing in an afternoon, and I know it makes me totally cheesy, but I really liked it! It made me laugh and I thought it was cute.

So today I'm back for round 2 of the totally cheesy Hollywood memoirs to get me through another day. Today I will be reading Here's The Story by Maureen McCormick. Yes, today I'm revisiting The Brady Bunch. :)

I was kind of a TV junkie growing up (who am I kidding, I still am) and I have quite a nostalgia for cheesy TV shows of my youth. In fact, I have an embarrassingly large collection of old TV shows on DVD. Want to watch the second season of Doogie Houser? I've got it. Want to have a Roseanne marathon that will take all day and most of the night? Come on over! Cheesy TV shows from the 80's and 90's are my guilty pleasure. They don't make TV shows like that any more.

Anyway, Brady Bunch is obviously older than that, but I grew up on the reruns. (and now so are my kids because I have that show on DVD too). So today I'm going to keep my mind off the impending referral by reading all about how Maureen McCormick became Marsha Brady and what happened after that. I wonder how many memoirs of cheesy TV show actresses I can read before the referral comes. Maybe THAT should be my new blog game.

Remember when Marsha went out to tell the boys it was time for dinner and they threw a football at her face? Classic....

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Still Waiting

Seriously. How much longer can I POSSIBLY wait for this referral before I literally go insane? I think I need to change my blog contest to "how many more days until Wendy officially loses her mind".

Bleh. The phone rang a little while ago and I found myself noting exactly what time it was when it rang, just in case it was the referral and I wanted to permanently remember exactly what time I got it. That's REALLY sad, lol.

It wasn't the referral, it was a good friend of mine letting me know that we're having a girls afternoon on Friday. I have two really good friends that live near me and they're so great at knowing when it's time to drag me out of the house. Friday afternoon is going to be kind of depressing around here if I get the Friday update letting me know that there were more referals that weren't ours, so spending the afternoon giggling with friends is exactly what I need to keep my mind off of it. I don't know what I'd do without my sweet friends.

Today I'm mostly just wandering the house, trying to keep busy. I'm reading a book today. I'm almost embarassed to admit what it is though! I'm reading Stori Telling, which is Tori Spellings autobiography. Cheesy, I know. I like autobiographies though. I like getting a look into people's lives, and Tori Spelling makes me laugh. Donna Martin graduated the same year that I did. Tori Spelling is a part of my teenage life. :)

That, sadly, is the most exciting thing going on around here today. I feel like I've gotten to the point where I'm practically pacing back and forth in front of the phone, waiting for it to ring with our referral call. It consumes my day. My goal every day is just to find something to keep me busy enough that I don't stare at the phone. Both of my kids are in school in the afternoons, so I'm home alone and it gets awfully quiet around here. I'd leave the house and go do something, but what if she calls while I'm gone?! She has my cellphone number, but sometimes I don't hear it when it rings.

May is almost over. The closer we get to June the most desperate I get for the call. For the past year and a half May has kind of been my mental "due date". I never thought it was going to go past May and for a while I thought it would probably be earlier. Now unless it miraculously arrives by Friday, it's looking like it's probably going to go into June.

I keep playing this mental game with myself, reminding myself of other things I waited for in the past that finally happened. I keep reminding myself of things that seemed really far away, but have now passed. I remember every Christmas morning when I was little. We weren't allowed to wake our parents up until a certain time, I think it was 6am or something, and we weren't allowed to see our presents until they were awake. Of course my siblings and I used to wake up hours early because we were so excited. I remember Christmas mornings the three of us would get in to bed together and wait out those last few hours before we could wake up our parents. We would lay there and try to guess what our presents would be and we would stare at the clock, waiting for the time to pass. The last twenty minutes or so used to always feel like they took forever! But 6am always did eventally come and Christmas morning always arrived.

Remember when you're a kid and you realize what your high school graduation year will be for the first time and it seems like that is a hundred years away? I graduated from high school 16 years ago. Remember when we talked about the year 2000 like it was some mystical thing? We hit the year 2000 over nine years ago. When I was 18 I was dating a guy who was leaving the country for two years and when he left I remember thinking that those two years were never going to pass. They did. That guy is now married with three kids. When Shawn and I first got married he had four years of college left and that seemed like an eternity to us. Not only did those four years pass, but eight more have passed since he graduated.

So one of these days I'll be holding Clarissa in my arms and thinking back to the time when I was waiting and I thought the day was never going to come. All those other things that I thought were never going to happen finally did and this will too.

I just really wish that it would happen today. :)

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

As long as I'm writing letters...

Dear Blog,

I'm writing to tell you that I'm sorry that I missed your first birthday three days ago. You're one year old now! You've been a good blog, always there when I needed to vent or when I wanted to tell a funny story and the comments that come from your friends always make me smile. Sure, sometimes you get a little boring, and sometimes even a little cranky, but we can always count on you to be regularly updated and once in a while you even share a photo or two.

Anyway, happy birthday blog, I hope you get a lot more exciting really, really soon.

Love,
Wendy


My blog is a year old! Woohoo! :P

Dear North Korea,

Please stop pretending that you're going to blow up the world. And if you ARE going to pretend that you're going to blow up the world, please do it next year after we get Clarissa home, because a mother experiencing delays picking up her is child is way scarier than a nuclear bomb.

Sincerely,
Wendy

Monday, May 25, 2009

Monday

Another week has passed. Will THIS be the week? Who knows.

We've had a fairly uneventful long weekend, although we did have some photography excitement! Last summer my photography teacher Dirk invited me to come along with him on a wedding shoot and assist. As a thank you for helping him out he offered to do some family portraits for us for free. I've been meaning to take him up on it forever, but it kept getting put off for one reason or another, but this weekend we decided that it was time to get it done.

He took us down to a pretty area right on the river on Friday evening and we took a bunch of photos. I haven't seen them yet, but I was really happy with the scenery and Dirk is a great photographer, so I think they're going to turn out really well. I'm going over later this week to take a look at them!

Then Saturday I borrowed his studio for a little while and I did some studio shots of our family for a project that I'm working on. I'm used to shooting in my makeshift studio, which is pretty much a backdrop set up in my dining room and hodgepodge of cheap studio lights, so getting to shoot in a real studio for the first time was SO much fun!! We had a ball.


So here's the project I'm working on for Clarissa. I'm making her a picture book of our family and things around our house that I can send to her in Korea for her foster mother to look at with her. I'm hoping that if she looks at it a lot, we'll look more familiar and less scary to her when we bring her home.

I did the studio photos on a white backdrop so that she'll be able to see us with no background distractions and then I had my korean translator translate some phrases to caption the pages.

I don't have the whole book done, but I can share the family photos and the photo of our house that is finished.

For some reason when I post photos here they always end up looking kind of crappy. The photos will look nice and sharp and bright in the book, but Blogger always makes them look a little washed out and grainy.

Here are the photos I have done so far. I'll translate for you. :)


This is Daddy.


This is Mommy.


This is Big Brother Josh.



This is big brother Matthew.

This is our house.

There are going to be more pages that I haven't finished yet, but that's all I have done so far. I had more translated phrases done, so I'm going to add pictures of both of our cats, her bedroom and possibly a few more things. I'm trying to hurry and get it done because I want to be able to mail is ASAP when we get our referral so that she'll have plenty of time to look at it before we go get her. From what I understand, foster mothers are usually really great at showing the babies photos of their family often so that they can get used to seeing them. I also have a few other photo related things that I'll be sending her as well. My hope is that if she sees our faces every day for a few months, by the time we go to get her we'll look a little familiar to her and that might make the transition a little easier. It might work and it might not but it certainly can't hurt! :)

So that's pretty much all that is happening around here these days. The weather is getting nice outside, the birds are back and enjoying the birdfeeder outside my bedroom window again and we're inching closer and closer to summer. That HAS to mean that we're also closer to our referral, right?!

Friday, May 22, 2009

Bleh.

I got the Friday update. There was a referral this week, it was for a boy, we've been skipped again. Friday updates are no longer the fun and excitement that they used to be.

Whew!

At least I can cross one waiting Korean off my list! Last night, not long after I made my blog post, I got the e-mail from the woman about the girl who might be staying with us for a few weeks.

She's a cute girl and I loved reading her application. It sounds like it might a really fun opportunity for us! She'd be be coming at the beginning of August and she'd be here for probably 2-6 weeks. That would work out perfectly for us, since if things work out the way we're hoping, we'll hopefully be going to get Clarissa around the middle or end of September. (or October if things don't hurry up!!)

I'm nervous about having someone come live at my house and I'm worried that she'll be bored here, but I also think it might be a really fun experience for our family. She might end up being a huge blessing if I'm going crazy for those last few weeks before we go pick up Clarissa. Spending time with her might help keep my mind off of things a bit and I think it would be so fun to show her around help her get adjusted to the US. I'm constantly trying to find someone to teach me about Korea and I think it would be really fun too get to teach her about the US. I think we could have fun with her.

So anyway, we're thinking about it. We didn't want to make a decision to quickly, so we're taking the weekend to decide if it's something we want to take on. We're leaning towards doing it, but I'm still weighing the pro's and cons.

I'm open to advice and opinions if you've got them!

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Koreans at the White house

So today I got an e-mail from a woman in our town who is looking for someone to host a female Korean exchange student for this next school year. My first thought was "A Korean girl at my house?! YES PLEASE!" My second thought was that I have officially gone insane. I can't take an exchange student in at the same time Clarissa gets here. That's just too much chaos at once in our house.

So I e-mailed her back and told her that as much as I would love to, it just won't work for our family. Then she e-mailed me back and said that if we're interested in something short term they often have families host exchange students for a few weeks while they find a permanent family and wondered if we would be interested in that.

That actually sounds very intriguing. She'd probably come in August before school starts and if she's only with us for a few weeks she'd be gone before we go to pick up Clarissa. It might actually be really fun to have someone from Korea come and stay with us. It would keep me busy for a few weeks before we go get Clarissa, which would be great because I'll probably be a basket case at that point, and we all know how obsessed I am with anything remotely related to Korea these days! It would be so fun to have someone here who could answer my zillion questions and share her culture with us while we share ours with her.

The lady who e-mailed me said that she had the picture and profile of the girl and would be happy to send it to me if I wanted to look it over and think about it.

So I e-mailed the woman back and said that we would definitely talk it over and think about it and I asked her to send me the info about the girl.

And then she never e-mailed me back.

So I've been sitting here all evening obsessively checking my e-mail, waiting for a picture and info about a Korean girl who may be coming to live at our house.

Wait a minute...that sounds awfully like something I'm already doing...

How many Korean people coming to live at our house can I obsess over in one day?

I'm sure she'll e-mail me the info tomorrow or whenever she gets around to it. It's not a big deal and normally I wouldn't be impatient about something like that, but we all know I'm a little crazy at the moment. People need to stop telling me that they're going to send me info about a Korean girl who is coming to live with us and then make us wait. lol

So I don't know if the Korean exchange student thing is going to work out or not. Honestly, at this point I don't even have enough info to make a blog post about it. I wouldn't mention it at all except that in all my neuroses and obsessing I find it really amusing that I'm waiting for someone to send me info about a Korean girl who might be coming to live with us. After I checked my e-mail for the 800th time today I finally had to giggle at the ridiculousness of the situation.

So at this point I pretty much don't even have the patience to wait for a pizza to be delivered. If Pizza Hut told me that it would be here in 30 minutes and it took 32, I might just go postal.

Steer clear of the crazy lady, she's waiting for the Koreans. :)

18 months

Well, here we are, at the milestone I didn't really want to reach. Today we have officially waited 18 months.

Somehow I just honestly didn't think it was going to take this long. I've seen plenty of people from our agency get their referrrals in 16-17 months recently and I just figured we'd probably be one of them. I guess the good news is that it's not very often that I see referrals for people that are longer than 18 months. That means that the likihood of something happening in the next 30 days is really good.

So if I'm back here posting on June 21st that we've reached 19 months with no referral I'm going to be seriously depressed. Actually, come to think of it, June 21st is our 12th wedding anniversary AND Fathers Day. That would be a real bummer of a day to be depressed. I think we're going to Portland that weekend. Shawn is taking me to the Portland Zoo for our anniversary. Some women need diamonds on their anniversary, I just want to go to the zoo and watch the monkeys. :) Who could be depressed at the zoo??

So I won't even think about 19 months with no referral. I'm going to the zoo with a picture of Clarissa in my pocket, and that's final. :)

On another note, I had SO much fun with our little referral guess game yesterday! I thought 5-6 people would respond and so far there has been over 30! Knowing that you're all coming here everyday, checking up on us and waiting with us makes me smile. I sometimes think I couldn't have gotten through this wait without this blog to spill my guts on and all my friends who show up here to encourage me. It's made the process more fun and I think this blog is always going to be something that we'll enjoy reading again someday when this time in our lives has passed.

So here we are in the home stretch. It can't be much longer now. One day soon our phone is going to ring and its finally going to be the news we've been waiting for. Clarissa is out there somewhere and any day now we're all finally going to get to see her face. Stay tuned.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

546 Days

According to the counter on my blog, it's been 546 days since we officially began our wait for Clarissa. The wait has actually been longer than that because the paperwork process took months before everything went to Korea, but we've been on the waiting list for 546 days.

So the question of the day is how many more days will it be?? I've decided to have a contest. Everyone post your guess and I'll come up with a prize for whoever gets the closest without going over. What will the counter say on the day we get our referral? I'm hoping for 546! There's still a few hours of the afternoon left for the agency to call!

But it's probably not going to happen today, so we'll make our guesses. I'm going to guess 566 and hope that I'm totally wrong and that it's sooner than that. Day 566 would be on June 9th. That's just a random day I picked, it means nothing special.

So give me your guess. What number will the counter say on referral day? I would assume that it's going to happen sometime in the next 30 days or so, but there's no way to say for sure.

Post your guess and maybe you'll win a prize!


edited to add: If you look on the lefthand side of the page you will notice that there is now a link to the official list of guesses. There are a few people who have chosen the same day. I'm not really sure what to do about that, so I'm just going to leave it. I'll let two people share the same day, but no more than that. If you choose a day that two people have already chosen, you'll need to pick a new day. If you see that you've chosen the same day as someone else and don't want to share your day, e-mail me with a new guess and I'll change it. The first person listed is the first person that chose that day. There are still lots of days left to choose! Post a comment on this post if you want to add your guess!

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

What I learned today

I had my first round of translation done today. This says Clarissa in Korean:

There's nothing particularly exciting about that, it just makes me smile to look at it. :)

Monday, May 18, 2009

Another change!

I wasn't super happy with the last blog design, so I redid it again today. I like this one much better!

It's Monday again!

It's Monday again and I'm making another blog post about how I hope this will be the week. I'm feeling a bit of deja vu. :)

So there was no referral last week. Maybe this week? Who knows. Sometimes I start to feel like it's never going to happen.

Here's the silly thing I'm stressing over lately. This is dumb, but it's my blog, so I get to blog about dumb things. :) The longer this referral takes, the longer it's going to be before we actually get her home. If we don't get a referral until later in June and if it ends up taking four months to get her home, which is entirely possible, it's possible that she wouldn't be home in time for Halloween.

Last Halloween I found the CUTEST ladybug costume in the history of ladybug costumes. It was so cute that I absolutely had to buy it. It's one of the very first things I bought for Clarissa. It's been sitting in her closet for a long time and every time I look at it I can't wait until Halloween when she's home and she can wear it. I've thought about her in that Halloween costume a million times. It's one of those mental milestones I've built up in my head. Whenever the wait gets hard and I think I can't take it anymore, I remind myself that at least she'll be home for Halloween and I've got a cute costume waiting for her.

So lately everytime I think about how long the wait is and I count 3-4 months ahead to when she might be home, I realize that we're inching closer and closer to Halloween. It's so silly, but I'm going to be completely crushed if she's not home to wear her Halloween costume.

Of all the things to worry about, that one is pretty lame, I realize, but there you go. Clarissa needs to be home in time for Halloween.

I still think the chances that she'll be home in time to wear her Halloween costume are good, but I'll feel much better about our chances if we could just get the referral already!! May is flying by, we're getting so close to June. It has to happen soon, right? How much longer can this really go on?? I guess we all just have to wait and find out.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Back from the train

We had such a fun day! After I wrote my blog post this morning I decided that we really needed to have a family adventure today, so I went searching for something fun to do.


There is a tiny little town about a half hour from Boise that has a train that does all sorts of fun little day trips. Through the year they have different themed trains. We've done the pumpkin liner in October where you take the train out to the pumpkin patch, we done the Polar Express train in December where you take the train out to Santas Workshop, and we've done a few little other excursions over the years.


I thought that might be a fun activity to celebrate the first really great weather of the year, so I checked their schedule and found out that they were doing a Wild West ride today. They have a theater company that comes and does a performance while you take the train ride. It's a 3 hour ride through the beautiful Idaho mountains and the audience becomes part of the show.


They had people dressed as people from the old West and they were taking the train to an area where they both had a claim for some gold and they both wanted to be the first ones to get to it. They went through the train cars and interacted with everyone on the train and there was a whole story line that was really cute. When we boarded the train they gave everyone fake money and during the ride we were all robbed after their tied up the sherriff. It was really fun.


The kids had a ball, the weather was absolutely beautiful and it was a really fun day. It's been a pretty rainy spring here, so we haven't really been able to enjoy very many sunny days yet this year. It's been mostly in the 60's and kind of cloudy lately. Today it was 80 degrees and sunny. I think everyone in town was outside today!


So we had a really great day on the train and now we're all home and ready for a movie night. I absolutely love Saturdays like this when we spend the whole day together doing something fun. I love my family and I love spending time with them.


Here's a picture of Josh and Matthew with two of the train robbers. Don't they look scary?! ;)



We're having a great train ride! The Hatfields and the McCoys are on the train and they just had a gunfight. It's a beautiful day, I'll have photos soon!
I'm coming to you from on board a train! For the next three hours we'll be in the middle of an old West train robbery! Fun stuff! Stay tuned for more info. :)

Saturday update

I woke up this morning and started my day and then realized that yesterday was Friday and I didn't even think about the Friday update ONCE the whole day! I actually forgot all about it! That's actually a really great thing because I've been trying to keep my mind off of things like that and it's means that I succeeded. Thank goodness for hair clips, they completely distracted me yesterday.

Anyway, I did say that I was going to continue to give Friday updates and I didn't yesterday, so here's the update. There was no Friday e-mail yesterday! I don't know what's up with the Friday updates. We used to get them weekly whether there was a referral or not and lately they're kind of hit and miss. If I don't get one I just assume that there were no referrals. At this point I'm actually happy about that, because we're at the point where if someone gets a referral and it isn't ours, it probably means that we've been skipped and that's just depressing. I'd rather not know.

So nothing is new as far as I'm aware. I'm doing my best to find projects to keep me busy so that I don't think about the referral quite so much. When I let myself dwell on it I become ridiculously cranky and that's not good for anyone. Maybe hairclips will my continue to be my distraction. Every time I feel really impatient and think I can't stand it anymore, I'll make a hairclip. By the time Clarissa gets here I'll have enough hair clips to provide a lifetime supply for every baby in the entire country of South Korea. :)

Today it's supposed to be 80 degrees, which means that hopefully we're going to go out and find something really fun to do. We haven't taken a Saturday car trip or gone on a wacky family adventure in quite a while. I think it might be time to start that back up again! I'll keep you posted!

Friday, May 15, 2009

Photos of my hair clips!

So, these aren't the greatest hair clips in the history of hair clips, but they're not too bad for my first try! I mostly just covered the clips with ribbon and then glued an embelishment to them. When I have more supplies I'm going to try corker bows and other things.

Now I just need a baby to put these clips on!











Much better today!

Now that I've recovered (mostly) from the events of yesterday, I'm in a much better mood! It still hurts to open my mouth, so I can't eat very well, but at least I'm not totally drugged up and numb anymore! :)

So in my quest to do some Clarissa related projects while I wait out the remaining days or weeks before the referral, I've found a new obsession. Hair clips!

Last night I was looking online at for some hair ideas for little girls and I kept seeing these cute ribbon covered aligator clips. I was going to buy some, but then I decided that they looked simple to make and I'm in desperate need of something to keep me busy, so I ran out and bought alligator clips and ribbon.

I'm having all sorts of fun with it this morning! I'm learning how to make different types of bows out of ribbon and it's definitely entertaining me for the time being. I'll take some photos once I have several made.

So that's all that is happening here today. I'm sitting on my bed covered in ribbon, bows, hair clips and hot glue. Fun stuff! :)

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Back from the dentist

I'm highly drugged out, my mouth is numb, it took over two hours, I threw up on the dentist and I think I just want to crawl into a hole and sleep for a week. The dentist said this a root canal was about as complicated as a root canal get. I have to go back next week and finish it up.

Not a good day.

I'm taking a nap.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

The tooth, the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth

So far this has not been my week. I had a crown put on one of my molars a year or so ago and ever since I had it done I've been having problems with that tooth. Then a few weeks ago I got an abcess in it and I had to go on antibiotics for it. That cleared it up, but yesterday it started bothering me again. This morning I had my six month checkup, so they x-rayed it and there is a huge abcess and to make a long story short I have to have a root canal tomorrow. Faaaantastic.

So tomorrow I get to take a break from sitting by the phone watching it not ring to go in and have a root canal. I think I need a vacation. Maybe tomorrow when I'm laying in the dentist chair on Halcion and nitrious oxide I can hallucinate myself a vacation to Maui, lol.

Now for the good news, I posted on Craigslist a week or so ago looking to hire someone to do some translation work for me. I'm working on a few things that I want to send to Clarissa in a care package once we get the referral and I really really want to do everything in Korean. I want to send her foster mother a thank you note, and it's important to me that it's in accurately translated Korean instead of in English. I don't know why, I'm sure that she can get it translated by the agency, but I just have so much love and respect for the person who is taking care of our child that I want to be able to say thank you in her language. It's important to me. I'm also making a picture book for Clarissa with pictures of our family and I want all the words in the book to be in Korean. I want her foster mother to be able to read it to her without having to translate it.

So anyway, I've been looking for someone to do some translation work for me and I can't find anyone local to do it. Our only Korean friend is Larry, and he does speak Korean but not often anymore, so he's a little rusty. It's a lot of work for him to translate and he's busy enough with his new job. He offered to send it to his dad and have him do it, but I have a feeling that I'm going to want several things translated over the next several months and it's a lot to ask to keep asking Larry's dad to do it for me.

Anway, the point of my story is that I found someone! I actually got an e-mail from a company that hires freelance translators for jobs like this. She gave me the profiles of three different people to choose from and I chose a native Korean who has lived in the US for 7 years and has extensive translating experience. I can contact him any time I need something translated and he charges by the word. Most of the things I need translated will be small, so it's not going to cost me very much and it will make me happy to be able to communicate with Clarissa's foster mother in Korean.

So there's the good news and the bad news today. I have to have a root canal, but I found a translator so that I can start working on some projects for Clarissa. I can't wait to show you what I'm making!

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Another week, another whine

Well, here we are AGAIN! Another week has passed with no referral. Will this be the week?

It's sort of getting hard for me to post on my blog these days. I feel like every single blog post says the exact same thing. There's not a whole lot of excitment going on at our house these days and there is a WHOLE bunch of me waiting impatiently by the phone. Not exactly the most exciting stuff to blog about! :)

So if I post a little bit less for the next little bit, that's why. I just don't want to keep making post after post about how I'm tired of the wait and that nothing is happening. If you don't hear from me it just means that there's nothing new. When the phonecall finally comes you're all going to know, I promise!

Tomorrow I have my six month checkup at the dentist and I know it's silly but it's totally bumming me out because when I made my appointment six months ago I was almost positive that I would have our referral by the time I had to go back. Several months ago I made a list on my blog of all the milestones I had to reach before the referral would get here. I remember saying that by the time I went back to the dentist I would probably have the referral. I also said that I was looking forward to the season finale of The Office because I would hopefully have the referral by then. The season finale of The Office is this Thursday. I shouldn't have set up milestones for myself. It's too depressing to pass them!!

In much happier news, I had a really great Mothers Day on Sunday. Shawn and the boys spoiled me rotten all day and they were super sweet. Shawn always goes way out of his way to make sure that I feel extra special on holidays and I really appreciate that. He's a great husband and a great example to our boys. I'm lucky to have such a fantastic husband and such sweet kids. They make it impossible to be too bummed out. Everytime I feel sorry for myself one of the kids gives me a hug or says something funny and it always lightens my mood. I'm grateful for them.

So today I'm back to trying to keep busy and trying to stop waiting for the phone to ring. I'm trying, but not really succeeding. Truthfully the adoption is on my mind every second of every day. My baby is out there somewhere and I need to know who she is. Maybe this will be the week.

Friday, May 8, 2009

Friday

My brother and his family have gone home! I really enjoyed having them here and we had a fantastic time, but it's always exhausting to have company. It's kind of nice to have the house quiet again.

They're fun to spend time with though. They have a two year old daughter who is just about the cutest kid I've ever seen in my life and she was my little buddy the whole time they were here. I had a good time with her, I was sad to see her go! They have a son who isn't much younger than Matthew and those two were pretty much joined at the hip for the while time. It's nice for my kids to spend some time with their cousins. They really had a great time.

I got the Friday update from the agency and there was a referral, which I already knew because I talked to her yesterday. I'm trying to work on being more patient. So far it's not working.:)

So that's pretty much all I have to report today. I'm glad it's Friday, I'm looking forward to a quiet weekend with the kids. Another week is just about over and that means we're another week closer to Clarissa!

Thursday, May 7, 2009

False alarm

So the agency called today.

Last week when I talked to them, the woman said that they try really hard not to call families who are at the top of the waiting list unless they have a referral because they don't want to mess with their emotions every time they answer the phone.

So today I was sitting around talking to my brother and suddenly the phone rang. On the other end it was THE woman. The woman whose call we have been waiting for for all this time. My heart literally jumped out of my chest.

Then she said "Don't get too excited! It's not a referral!!"

AAAAAHHHHHHHH!! Don't do that to me!!

She apologized up and down for calling me without a referral but it turns out that our USCIS fingerprints are getting close to expiring and we have to go get them renewed.

*SIGH* First our homestudy expired and now our fingerprints are about to expire. I don't want to hear the word expire one more time, I want to hear the word REFERRAL!!

She went on to say that I shouldn't get my hopes up too much for a May referral because this really could easily go on until June. They only get a couple referrals a month and they've already gotten a couple. There may not be another one this month.

This SUUUCKS.

Anyway, she said that she'd try not to call me again until the referral comes. Bleh.

On a better note, my brother and sister in law are here and we're having a blast! I absolutely love their family. Their kids are are so adorable, I can't get enough of them.

And I had forgotten how hysterically funny my brother is. We haven't stopped laughing since they got here. He's been playing guitar for us and making us laugh for 24 hours. They can come back any time!

They're going to go home tomorrow afternoon and then it will be time to relax in a quiet house again and try not to think about the adoption. I'm trying to keep busy. We have a few things going on tomorrow night and Saturday and I'm just going to keep my mind on of those things and try to stop waiting for the phone to ring. (with a REFERRAL this time!)

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Ten good things about today

1. My rice cooker will be here!

2. My brother and his family will be here!

3. It's raining and I love rainy days.

4. My niece and nephew will be the first ones to try out Clarissa's bed. I'm strangely excited about someone finally sleeping in it!

5. We've having Bulgogi for dinner. YUM

6. I THINK I can talk my brother into watching a Korean movie. Finally! :)

7. Leftover birthday cake.

8. The Korean agency is open again after being closed for the holiday.

9. We're one day closer to our referral.

10. The boys had a dental cleaning a couple of days ago and neither of them had a cavity. We had been struggling with Josh remembering to brush his teeth in the mornings, but a month or so ago he started doing it every single morning without being reminded and he's done great. I mentioned to him today that I'm proud of him for being so responsible and taking care of his teeth without being reminded and he said "Yeah, I did it to impress a girl." LOL! Apparently there is a girl in his class that he likes and he's been making sure his teeth are brushed in the morning so that he'll have nice looking teeth and nice breath for her. I'm still giggling about that.

Yay for today! :)

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Happy Birthday Josh!

Today Josh turns nine! He's growing up so fast. It always boggles my mind every year when another birthday comes along. Didn't I just barely give birth? Where did the time go?

So in honor of Josh's birthday, here is a blog post all about Josh.

Josh is our firstborn. He's our guinea pig. :) Josh was born during a really hectic time in our lives. When we got married Shawn had four years of pharmacy school left to do. I'm a planner and I like my life to work out just the way I plan (yeah, right), so the plan was for me to work for four years while Shawn went to school and once he was done we would buy a house and start a family.

Two years into that plan we got two bits of unexpected news. First of all Shawn was informed that the college was sending us to Boise to do internships at the end his third year, which would be in May 2000. We had really hoped to do all four years of school in the college town we were living in, but for that fourth year everyone is required to do a year of internships and there weren't enough of them in that town so the school assigned people other places to go. There was no choice in the matter, we were moving to Boise in May.

As we were trying to absorb that bit of information and I was trying to figure out how I'd get a new job and where we'd live, we discovered some other unexpected news. I was pregnant! AND I due in May, right when we were told we'd have to move!

We had quite a few sleepless nights while we absorbed the fact that we were suddenly about to become parents AND move to Boise all at the same time. I was absolutely thrilled to be starting our family, but completely overwhelmed every time I tried to figure out the logistics of our sudden upcoming changes.

After much prayer and discussion, Shawn was able to delay our move until July, we found an apartment in Boise to live in and things worked themselves out.

Then all I had to do was focus on the fact that I had to give birth! :) I'm terrified of hospitals and anything even remotely medically related. I avoid the doctor like the plague. I remember crying to Shawn many times during my pregnancy that I had changed my mind, I wasn't going to give birth. Someone was going to have to come up with another solution, lol.

Overall I remember that time as a really fun, exciting time in our marriage though. We took the childbirth classes with a wacky instructor (who we still giggle about to this day), I read "What to Expect When You're Expecting" over and over and over, I had an absolute ball buying little tiny baby clothes and our favorite pasttime was watching my stomach move around. With all the flipping around that was happening we decided that Josh was going to be an acrobat. I still remember how fun that was.

The end of April came along and I was put on bedrest for Pre-eclampsia. I woke up one morning and my hands and feet were so swollen that I could barely walk or hold anything, so we called the doctor, I got checked out and I was sent home and told to stay in bed and not move unless I had to until my due date. I was due on May 23rd.

On May 4th I went in for a non-stress test, which I had to do twice a week because of the pre-eclampsia and when I went in they took my blood pressure and announced that I was being induced right that minute. Even on bedrest my blood pressure was way too high to continue the pregnancy.

The one thing I remember most about that day was that I couldn't eat!! I went in for the test early that morning and I didn't have time for breakfast so I figured I'd eat when I got home. Only I never WENT home, I went to labor and delivery instead and when I got there they told me that I couldn't eat until I gave birth. I remember being really hungry that day. lol

For as terrified as I was about giving birth, I actually have really good memories of that day. There was pain involved, of course, but I don't remember that part so much anymore. What I do remember is really nice nurses, I remember reading a lot of magazines and I remember how completely excited Shawn and I were. We were ready to see our baby!

They started the medication to induce me at about 9am on May 4th and I was in labor for an extremely looong time. The day went on and on and on and finally around midnight I was almost ready to deliver.

What I remember most about that night is this. When I went over my birth plan with the doctor beforehand, I told him that I absolutely did not want anyone in the room that didn't absolutely have to be there. I'm not the kind of person that wants my entire family, my best friends and the janitor in there watching me give birth.

But when the time came it was close to midnight, I was totally high on lack of sleep and adreneline and all my big ideas went out the window. I was the only person in labor that night and all the nurses on the floor were bored. One of them stuck her head in to see if she could come in and watch and I surprised everyone by inviting her and every nurse on the floor in for the party.

And it was a party! We had so much fun! All the nurses were making a big fuss and we were making bets on what time he'd be born and we were discussing his name and how much we thought he'd weigh...I'll always remember how much fun it was with all those nurses in there.

After a very long day, Josh finally made his appearance on May 5th at 1:24 in the morning. I will never forget what it was like to look at him for the first time. My baby. He was perfect. I remember how special that moment was for me and Shawn. It was one of those moments that will be in my heart forever.

Josh arrived three weeks early, weighing 6lb 9oz. He was skinny and tiny and he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

I learned a great thing about Shawn that day. Shawn had been telling me since we got married that he was scared of babies. He was the youngest child in his family, he didn't have younger cousins or anything and he'd never been around babies in his life. He didn't have the slightest idea what to do with one. He stressed about that a lot when I was pregnant.

What I learned when Josh was born is that Shawn was born to be a dad. For someone who had never held a baby before, Shawn was fantastic right from the start. He changed the first diaper and he handled Josh like he'd been doing it for a million years. Ever since that day Shawn has been an incredible hands on dad. He's superdad in my eyes.

So we took Josh home and became a family of three. I won the baby jackpot when I had that kid. Josh is a joy every day of my life. He's hysterically funny, he's freakishly smart and he's incredibly sweet and soft hearted.

Here are 10 facts about Josh:

1. He has been an extremely early riser since the time he was born. He's definitely a morning person, sometimes getting up as early as 5:30. He likes the quiet in the morning. He starts his day before the rest of us get up.

2. He loves to build things with Legos. He doesn't like building the kits though. Every time he gets a kit he takes all the pieces and builds something else with them. He has come up with all kind of great creations!

3. He loves art, especially the work of Vincent Van Gogh. When he was in Kindergarten they did a little lesson on Vincent Van Gogh (he goes to an art based magnet school, so those types of things are a common part of the curriculum) and while the other kids forgot all about him and moved on to something else the next week, Josh was officially a fan of Van Gogh. He would bring home books from the library about the life and works of Van Gogh and for Christmas that year the thing he wanted more than anything for Christmas was a framed Van Gogh print. It was the most expensive gift he got from Santa that year and it's still hanging over his bed. At the moment he's doing a report for school on the life on Van Gogh.

4. He loves to draw comics. He has a whole series of them that he's been working on for ages.

6. He loves computers (he's definitely my child!) and he's always working on a computer project of some sort. He likes to make videos with his digital camera and then he narrates them and turn them into movies with Windows Movie Maker. We've enjoyed many of his masterpieces!

7. One of my favorite early memories of Josh was that his first word was Hi and when he was a baby he used to say hi to EVERYONE. We would go to the grocery store and he would wave and say hi to everyone like he was the grand marshall of a parade. lol

8. One of my favorite things about Josh is how kind he is to people. He's very soft hearted and he's always the first person to give someone a hug when they're sad.

9. He loves animals. We've enjoyed learning about the birds in our tree together and we really bonded over the ducks in our yard.

10. Josh loves to talk! He starts talking as soon as he gets up, he talks all day and he talks in his sleep. Life is never boring when Josh is around!

So today I celebrate one of the biggest blessings in my life. Our family wouldn't be the same without Josh in it, and my life wouldn't be nearly as fun. Today as I remember what was happening in my life nine years ago it makes me smile. I didn't know then what a joy and a blessing Josh was going to be in my life. I can't comprehend my life without him in it. I love you, Josh!

Monday, May 4, 2009

My awesome brother!

I was going to try to add some of Chad's music here, but he just put up a myspace page with some music on it, so you can listen to it there!

http://www.myspace.com/chaddjensen

My favorite song of his is one that he wrote for his wife, but it's not on his myspace page. If I can figure out how to post that one here I'll do it in a little bit. I love it!

I'm proud of my awesome brother!

Edit:
Woohoo, I think I finally figured out how to share a few more songs! Here's the one he wrote for his wife. It's my favorite!

Monday

Well here we are again, at the beginning of another week. Could this be the week? Likely not because there are some holidays going on in Korea right now so the agency is closed for a few days. I think that this past weekend was Buddas birthday and tomorrow is Childrens Day in Korea, which is a fun holiday for them. Parents give their children presents and there are lots of fun celebrations.

Normally I would totally make that a holiday in our family too, since I'm trying to incorporate Korean traditions into our family, but tomorrow is also Josh's birthday and I don't want his special day to get overshadowed by everyone else getting presents too.

Anyway, so I know that the agency is closed for a few days, which means the likelyhood of a referral this week is probably small. Strangely that's almost good news to me because if I know that the likelyhood is small I'll be less likely to jump at every phone call for the next few days. When I know what we're dealing with I can handle it better than not knowing, even if that means knowing that a referral is NOT coming.

It's also maybe a good thing because I have a super busy week coming up this week! Today I have a whole bunch of projects that I have to do for my church job, tomorrow is Josh's birthday so I'll be busy with that all day and then Wednesday my brother and his family are coming to visit!!

I really enjoy my brother and his family and I don't see them a whole lot, so I'm REALLY excited that they're coming to stay for a few days!! My brother has some time off work, so they're just coming to hang out for a few days. I really love his wife and they have three super cute kids, including a brand new baby who I'm SO excited to snuggle with while they're here!

My brother is five years younger than me and he is insanely musically talented. A few years ago he released a bluegrass guitar CD. He's a fantastic guitar player. While he's here I'm going to take some photos of him with his guitar and we're going to put together a website for him. The music is kind of a side gig for him, he's also a geologist.

When I have more time this week I'm going to make another blog post and share some of his music. He's really good!

This morning I had a good time shopping online for my Mothers Day gift! Shawn is normally really fantastic about picking out presents for me, I rarely shop for my own gifts, but this time I knew exactly what I wanted, so I picked it out myself. I'm getting a rice cooker! Now that I'm making Korean food so often, I'm always making sticky rice and I'm not really happy making it on the stove. It doesn't always come out the way I like it. Every time our Korean friend Larry comes over to make us Korean food he brings his rice cooker and it always makes perfect sticky rice.

I researched rice cookers forever and I finally picked one out this morning. It's a nice one that also works as a steamer, a slow cooker and does some other things. It has a timer on it, so I can actually put the rice in earlier in the day and just tell it when I want it to be finished. It will also switch to a warm setting when it's done so you can eat it whenever you decide you're ready. I'm really excited about it, I'm going to start making rice all the time!

It will be here in a couple of days, so it will be here in time for me to use it make Korean food for my brother and his family while they're here! I'm hoping I can talk them into watching a Korean movie with us. I'm still on a mission to convert people to Korean movies. :)

Anyway, this is shaping up to be a really busy, but really fun week. I'm happy to be busy right now. The more I can keep my mind occupied with other things, the less time I have to stress out over when the referral is going to get here!!

Stay tuned for my brothers awesome music later this week!

Friday, May 1, 2009

Fire in the hole!!

I made Tak Toritang! It was super easy to make and is SOOO good, but bless those sweet Korean women who told me to take it easy on the gochujang! I only used barely half of what the recipe called for and it was just at the limit of what our mouths can handle. If I had used the whole 3 tablespoons I would have had smoke coming out of my ears!! I can't comprehend anyone being able to eat the recipe with 3 tablespoons in it!!

So the verdict is that Tak Toritang is super declicious and we will definitely be making it again, but gochujang has to be handled with care. Here's a (not so great) picture!

Too hot for you!

I've been looking for new Korean recipes and tonight I'm making something called Tak Toritang. We've never had it before but it sounds good. One of the ingredients it calls for is gochujang, which is a Korean red pepper paste. It's hard to find, you have to get it from a Korean market, which means that I got to go back to the Korean market we went to last night. Yay!

Gochujang is pretty much a pantry staple in all Korean homes. It's used in lots of Korean cooking. But it's red pepper paste, so unless you're used to eating really hot, spicy food, which Koreans are and Americans usually aren't, you have to be careful with it!

So when I got to the market I asked the cute Korean lady from yesterday's adventure where I could find gochujang. Another Korean woman in the store heard me asking for it and started saying "No! No! Too hot for you!!" Lol! She came over and told me to make sure not to use very much of it because it will be too hot for me and for Matthew, who was with me. She was so cute that I wanted to give her a hug and take her home with me.

Then once the woman from yesterday helped me find it, she started saying the same thing. She kept saying "Too hot! Mix with water!" I told her what I was trying to make, so she gave me lots of good advice about how to cook it.

Can I just LIVE at the Korean market until Clarissa gets here??

Anyway, I haven't attempted to make my Tak Toritang yet, but it looks really easy, so I'm going to try it tonight. In the meantime, here's the recipe if anyone wants to hunt down gochujang and try it:

Tak Toritang

INGREDIENTS

2 1/2 pounds chicken drumettes
2 large potatoes, cut into large chunks
2 carrots, cut into 2 inch pieces
1 large onion, cut into 8 pieces
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons white sugar
3 tablespoons hot pepper paste (gochujang) (or less if you're American and the women in the Korean store tell you that it's too hot for you.:))


DIRECTIONS
In a large pot over medium heat, mix the chicken, potatoes, carrots, onion, sugar, and garlic. Pour in water and soy sauce, and stir in sugar and hot pepper paste. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer 45 minutes, until chicken juices run clear, vegetables are tender, and liquid has thickened. Serve with rice.

I'm not using chicken drumettes, I'm just going to cube some chicken breast. Yum! I'll let you know how it goes and I'll let you know if it is too hot for me! :)

Another Friday

Well, here we are again, another week has passed.

I said that I wasn't going to do Friday updates anymore, but I had a couple of people who asked me to keep going with them anyway, so I think I will, but I'm not obsessing over them like I was before.

At this point a referral for someone else doesn't mean a whole lot to us. We've reached the point where people in line behind us are getting referrals, so a referral doesn't necessarily mean that we're moving up a spot. When you get this close to the front of the line it's possible to get skipped when a baby becomes available if they feel like the person in line behind you is a better match for the baby. We're going to get skipped every time there is a boy referral, since we're waiting for a girl and the woman at our agency said there have been mostly boy referrals lately. There are generally more boys available for adoption than girls in Korea, so it's definitely not uncommon for people waiting for boys to get matched quicker.

So we continue to wait. I'm not going to make another whiny post about how hard the wait is because I think you've all heard it a million times by now, but I'm still going a little crazy here. I'm hanging in there though. We'll get there.

Last night we went to the Korean market, which is my favorite place to go these days. There's not a very big Korean community in Boise, so there aren't many Korean stores, but there's one not far from our house that is pretty good. I'm so funny about anything Korean lately. I just want to be around Korean people and Korean food and Korean music and anything else that makes Korea feel like a real place to me. If Korea feels real to me then Clarissa feels real. Maybe that makes no sense.

Anyway, so we went to the Korean store and I absolutely love the woman who works there. I just wanted to follow her around the store all evening. I didn't, but I wanted to! She helped us pick out a Korean barbeque cooker thing that is so cool! It's the real Korean way to cook and serve Bulgogi. Bulgogi is korean barbequed beef and it's so freakin' good I could eat it three meals a day. Normally I stir fry it on the stove and serve it on regular dinner plates, but in Korea it's cooked on a portable cooking device right on the table and then everyone eats from there. They don't serve individual portions to everyone.

Maybe that sounds unsanitary, but it's the "real" Korean way! :) And since I'm having fun trying to do things the "real" Korean way, we decided to buy one. If nothing else it's a really cool gas powered emergency cooking device for our emergency supplies. If the power goes out for several days and we needed to cook our food, we could do do it on there and the whole thing packs away in a little case. I'm also thinking how fun it would be to go on a picnic at the lake and eat bulgogi instead of hamburgers!! :)

Oh, and speaking of that, it just reminded me of something I'm looking forward to. Someone told me that in Korea you can buy bulgogi burgers at McDonalds! I've got to try that.

So anyway, there's what's keeping me happy lately. If I surround myself with Korean things, Korea becomes a real place to me, which makes Clarissa more real to me, which in a strange way makes this last part of the wait a little easier. It makes me feel connected to Clarissa, which is what I need right now. I know she's out there somewhere and surrounding myself with the same things that she's surrounded by right now makes me feel closer to her. So maybe if I hang out at the Korean market enough and eat lots of bulgogi the real Korean way and watch enough Korean movies, I might actually survive this last part of the wait after all. Let's hope so! :)