Ready... Set... Go...

Here.... We...... Goooo to Korea! We are leaving tomorrow! Fortunately, Our house sitter was available on such short notice! We are nervous. We are excited. I think the term is "anxious"? A term I have used a lot lately. I am so glad we were able to go on such short notice because Luke and I are not good planners? It's 9pm and we're not ready. We went to dinner with friends. :)

I will be posting from S. Korea, so please wish us luck with Big Ike. He will soon be abducted by aliens and I'm sure it will be scary. I feel bad for him, but I don't know if there is a child in the world that is loved as much and by more people than him. Lots and Lots of Big Scary People. :)

Signed,

amber and Luke, a childless couple for a few more days....

Visa Interview!

Ok, so seriously, this is THE LAST THING they needed before they will call us and we can go! Of course it happened on a Friday, so the earliest we could get a call would be Monday. It might be Tuesday. It could be the next week. But I am hopefully for MONDAY!!!!!!!!

We are going to start packing tonight or tomorrow or an hour before we get on the plane-depending on how we feel :). I hope we start packing soon though so we don't forget anything.

It is custom to bring gifts for people that work at the orphanage and the foster mom. I am really afraid I'm going to somehow misplace those items.

I posted a picture of the quilt I made for the foster mom earlier, I got his social worker an OU shirt, and I bought everyone else cheese shaped like Indians and buffalo from the OKC cheese factory. I am hopeful I will be able to get it in the country. I know that cheese is a weird gift, but I was trying to think of something that no one else has brought yet? I feel dumb even talking about it. It's really hard to buy gifts for people you don't know and will never see again, yet want them to know how much you appreciate them?

I caught these footballs last night at the Del City football game. They lost. But Mulder and Sculley love them.

Anyway, lets hope for Korea next week!

Big IKE's room.

First, my Dad wants to "change the way we talk about [Ike]". He wants to start calling him "BIG Ike!" and "interject an aura of strength with compassion and generosity". That was a text message I received from my dad the other day. So, OKAY GREAT! BIG IKE it is!

I just wanted to show Big Ike's room. Clearly he needs more things. I have been doing laundry ALL DAY LONG and it is ALL HIS CLOTHES! Really? Why? Why does he need so much? Of corse some of the clothes go to 24 months.

He has toys coming out the wazoo. My mom has a whole room filled with toys. Seriously. It was my step-brother's room growing up. It used to have a bunk bed with two dressers and all his stuff. Now it is all TOYS for Ike. Including a ball pit-you know like the ones they used to have a Mc Donald's when we were little?

He has 7 bathing suits! Unfortunately, I don't think I will be able to take him out of the country till we are able to formally adopt him-6 months! This is already the longest I have been in the US in years. Then after Korea I will be stuck here again. However, we can still go to Puerto Rico! Which I love, love, love!

Can you see the "Mini" in the back ground?

I drive a red Mini. My parent's thought it would be funny if BIG Ike had his own Mini. It has lights, a horn and drives all around the house.

The chair was Luke's grandpa's favorite chair. He is 93! and gave it to Ike. It is clear no one loves him. :)

I know it looks bare here, but I'm getting a picture framed for this location. My grandpa painted it for me and after all these years I'm framing it for BIG Ike.

The frog is a piggy bank we started for him before we received our referral. Luke's a banker. Therefore, Ike needs his own savings account. We have to wait till we adopt him formally to start his I-39 (?) College thing??? I'm just worried about the day-to-day (notice the clothes....)

(I'm pretty sure I need to re-do his closet. The top shelf is way to tall for little ol' me.)

Anyway, his room doesn't really look that awesome from these pictures :( I didn't stage it. I just wanted to convey that he has a bunch of stuff! I guess that is what you do when you can't love on someone physically. We, in my circle, love with stuff. Fortunately I know of a few little boys that are about 10 months younger than BIG Ike and will be inheriting these things.

Sometimes I wish I was a more organized-photo shoot- kind of decorator . I showed a house the other day and this person was a great decorator. I'm/we are- just us?? We have lots of stuff and go lots of places and everything we own is from somewhere or someone and means something to us. We will be the old people that have things from around the world and one day Ike will want to pull out his hair because he won't know what to do with it. :)

So here we are. Today we have a room with lots of things for a little boy that we have 11 pictures and 12 minutes of video of. Soon, we will have that same little boy, running and screaming around the house. Breaking our "thing"riding our dogs and loving every minute of it. We honestly cannot wait. We've waited our whole lives. As long as I can remember and Luke from our first date 12+ years ago, and it is finally almost here.

Now we wonder "what are we going to do with him"?

*Please vote!

Poll.

I have created a poll about when you think I will get my travel call. If you answer the last choice I will hunt you down! hahahaha I just washed ALL of his clothes! He has so many! I hadn't even cut the tags off any of them. It took me a while. He is so cute and will look like quite the REALTOR in his little two piece suits! :)

Tomorrow is month 5, but he has his PASSPORT!

(Just a little picture of Mulder from Luke's phone.)

Hopefully this means that we will be traveling ANY day (or in the next 4 weeks). I'm excited. Not SO excited because I'm a worry wart and am nervous this part will take forever. But in the interest of not wasting away things to be happy about I'm going for a run to enjoy the beautiful day and then start working on my last two projects I wanted to get done. Once they are complete I will post pictures. However I forgot to take "befores" so most of you will not know the difference. :)

On the running front... I went with the Nike Eclipse. I have been running in them for a little over a week and really like them. I can feel my feet getting stronger and my knee/hip seems to hurt much less! That is news for excitement! I ran every day, which is something I haven't been able to do a year. Whoo Hooo. All my runner friends, I suggest* to you to get thin-no support shoes. It has really been helping a lot of my friends who run and were having issues. (read Born to Run) :)

*I am not a medical doctor. As an attorney I feel obligated to have disclaimers :)

Sculley and Mulder's Coats of Many Colors.

This is Mulder. He is 4 1/2 and weighs around 80 lbs. He has very little fur. Therefore, he is constantly cold. 3 years ago I started making him coats because it is too hard to find coats to fit big dogs. He loved this coat. He wore it everyday and when he wasn't wearing it he would carry it around. When people came over he would go grab his coat and show it to them. Needless to say, the coat barely made it through the season. Sculley also loves new coats, but for her it is more of a fashion statement to wear on walks.

This was the coat of '08. The colors didn't seem to work out right. I made it in a hurry. Mulder did not like this coat. He was not at all proud of it. I didn't made Sculley one because her coat from '07 still fit and was in good shape. So here I was, Sculley was mad at me because she did not get a new coat and Mulder was embarrassed of his..

This year, I tried to make a similar coat to '07. I wish I had a picture of Sculley and Mulder's eyes when I held up the fabric! They both lifted their heads from the couch and started shaking their little tails with excitement. They knew and new coat was a coming.

This year I made Sculleys coat first. She was good with her fittings and stayed around the sewing table incase I needed to measure her again. She doesn't like sleeves and will not wear a hood so her pattern is different than Mulder's. She has significantly more hair than Mulder so she doesn't need the extras. She LOVES her new coat and is very proud of it. I think it shows off her figure nicely. Mulder's had to wait until today. He was not happy about not having his coat yesterday with Sculley.

He LOVES his new coat too! I feel so accomplished. It makes me very happy to see them prancing around in their new coats! I'm excited to walk them around the park in their new coats.

EP.

Woooooo Hoooooo! That's Emigration Permission for all you non-adoption people. I have been waiting for this since mid-July and it finally came today! YAY!