Daddy's Boy

It is becoming obvious that Jordan is definitely a Daddy's boy. His face lights up whenever Luke enters the room, and he always wants to know what Daddy is up to. He has fallen completely in love with Luke and the feelings are clearly mutual!Taking a trip around the house. I think Jordan would be content to walk the loop around the house all day long!

Enjoying some fun with Daddy before going to bed.

Jordan is always so curious about any foods we eat.

Once he was offered a bite of Luke's dinner of rice and seaweed he couldn't get enough! He gobbled down many spoonfuls and seemed so happy after he had finished eating.

Watching ESPN with Daddy.

Enjoying a little cuddle time before bed.


Dancing with Daddy

Coming Home!

After almost 24 hours of traveling we finally made it home! The trip began with a visit to Eastern where Jordan and his foster mother were waiting. Dr. Kim offered a prayer for Jordan and then we piled into the van and headed to the airport. After a one hour trip to the airport we checked in and waited about another hour to board the flight. Thankfully Jordan slept in his bassinette during most of the 10 hour flight to Seattle. After a very stressful layover in Seattle due to almost missing our plane because of customs, we boarded another plane headed for Denver. In Denver we waited 1 hour on the runway without air conditioning before finally heading for Grand Rapids where we arrived at about 12:30 a.m. It was a very long journey and we were shocked at how well Jordan handled it! Very few tears! When we arrived in Grand Rapids we were surprised to be greeted by some family and friends. Since it was close to one in the morning we didn't expect anyone except my parents, so we were thrilled to see more familiar faces there to greet Jordan home!

Enjoying one more laugh and cuddle with his foster mother.

Crawling around at the airport in Seoul.

Meeting Grandpa and Grandma for the first time. We can't wait for him to meet Grandpa and Grandma Scherkenbach in a few short days!

Now we are home and are trying to settle into a routine. Jordan has loved exploring the house and is so eager to try walking everywhere! He also has adjusted to the time change more easily than I have. He went to sleep at 9:30 last night and didn't wake up until 8:30 this morning! 11 straight hours of sleep! Mommy isn't doing as well with the time change and couldn't fall alseep until 2:00 last night.

Jordan is full of smiles and laughs.

He loves to pull himself up on furniture and has even taken 3 steps on his own!

He loves books, although he is usually more interested in chewing the book than in listening to the story!

Jordan crawls everywhere he can!

Visiting Gwangju

After asking Luke what he thought of the trip to Gwangju this weekend he responded by saying, "It was the trip of a lifetime, and I mean that literally!" And that is so true. It definitely was an unbelievable experience. We were fortunate enough to arrange for an interpreter to accompany us on our trip. She brought her friend along as well so we never had any issues with the language barrier. We took a 3 hour train ride on Saturday afternoon down to Gwangju (apparently I've been spelling the city wrong all this time) and were met at the train station by Mrs. Yoo's husband. Mrs. Yoo is the woman who runs the group home that is located in the spot where Luke's orphanage was located. In fact, Mrs. Yoo is the daughter-in-law of Mrs. Park, the woman who was in charge of the orphanage while Luke was living there. As we headed up to the orphanage we had to drive up a very steep hill and immediately Luke began having memories of living there. Before our trip we had been told that the orphanage was torn down, so we were overwhelmed when we arrived to find that several of the original buildings were still standing. There were so many incredible moments we experienced during our stay in Gwangju that we will share when we arrive home. We also took about 100 pictures (no exaggeration!) during our time there. Here are just a few for you to enjoy.When Mrs. Yoo found out that it was Luke's birthday, she arranged for an impromptu birthday celebration.

Luke was presented with a cake and a gift while Mrs. Yoo and the children living at the group home sang "Happy Birthday" to him.

Here we are with our interpeters,Yoon-Gi and Se-In, on the busy streets of Gwangju.
We have a picture of Luke when he was about 4 years old standing on these very steps or at least on one of the sets of stone steps that were leading up to the orphange.

Before we left on Sunday Mrs. Yoo took us on a short tour of Gwangju. She was so excited that Luke was there and wanted to show him everything! Notice how narrow the streets are!

Changdeokgung Palace (Part 2)

Here are some pictures from our visit to the Changdeokgung Palace. We had a wonderful time despite the very hot weather. Luke and I at the entrance to the palace.


A view inside one of the buildings of the palace.

Our tour guide is pictured here in traditional Korean clothing. She must have been so hot!



After visiting the palace Luke and I spent some time at the Insadong Market. We found some great souveniers, but we were so hot and tired by this point in the day!

Changdeokgung Palace

Surprise! This is Lucas writing for the first time here in beautiful Korea. Its everything I expected and more. I love this city, pictures and words really cant do it justice. Today was our first real touristy day. We finally have recovered from the jet lag, I thought I could tough it out, but I couldnt. Anyways, we saw the palace Changdeokgung today and took a tour. Its really an amazing place and we were really glad we did it. It took about an hour and 20 minutes so we really got our 3 bucks worth. The history is amazing with that palace, its one of 5 in Seoul but apparently its the biggest and best one.

We finally figured out the subway system today, or I should say Kristin figured it out and I just went where she told me. We have run into several americans and canadians and australians, that spoke english, so thats been fun, but the language barrier is very difficult. We can say thank you very much and Hello, how are you. Thats it. Most people here dont speak english and I truly feel like a foreigner. The people are very polite here and are very gracious. Emily you would love it here. I think of you a lot as I pass by because so many of the women look like you. Gee, really? Also, I thought I would be taller here in Korea, but I'm not! I'm still short even here! That was a surprise to me.

We also visited our first street market today and that was a blast, so much to see and look at, it was sensory overload, but an amazing experience. also there is food everywhere, street venders with all kinds of tasty and exotic foods. You have to be careful, cause if you eat something that doesnt agree with you, which happened to me, you feel weird all day, so I'm toning down the adventure eating.

Hope you all are doing well, we will be back soon and have more jet lag, but little JT will be with us and that is such a joy I cant even express it to you.

Love Lucas and Kristin

Making plans

So far this trip we have been pretty much consumed with meeting Jordan and getting over the jet lag. On Tuesday and Wednesday it was very, very rainy here and we had to buy umbrellas. Even with the umbrellas we were soaking wet after walking the streets of Seoul. So after lunch on Wednesday afternoon we decided to go back to our hotel to take a short nap because we were still trying to get adjusted to the time difference. We intended to take a 30 minute nap or so, but ended up sleeping for 7 hours!! We completely fell into a deep sleep and were shocked to wake up and find that it was dark outside. Yesterday we managed to stay up the whole day but still went to bed early at 9:00. After meeting with Dr. Kim, having lunch with the Eastern staff, and meeting Jordan, we hung out with some new friends who are also adopting from Korea for the rest of the day. The big news is that yesterday Luke managed to arrange a trip for us to Kwaangju. We are going to visit the daycare center that is in the spot where his orphanage once stood. Someone at Dillon kindly set us up with an organization here in Seoul that provides volunteers to travel with Korean adoptees to their birth cities. So tomorrow a gal from this organization (along with her friend) is accompanying us on our trip to Kwaangju. We are taking the train out of Seoul and spending the night there. The lady who runs the daycare center has spoken with Luke several times now and she is so excited to show him around. She is arranging for hotel rooms for us for Saturday night. It should be an interesting adventure!

We hope to visit some markets today and try to bravely navigate the subway system. Saturday and Sunday is our trip to Kwaangju and then Monday we will leave to bring Jordan home!

2nd meeting with Jordan

This will be a quick post because we are due to meet up with some friends we have made here very soon. I knew you would be interested to see more pictures, so I wanted to at least post a few of the photos we took this afternoon. Jordan played with us for about a half hour this afternoon and we even managed to coax a few smiles out of him. I hope to post more later letting you know what else we've been up to. Until then, enjoy these pictures of our new son!This yellow ball was his favorite toy! The ball, like every other toy, went straight into his mouth!

First meeting with Jordan

This morning we had our first visit with baby Jordan. We first met with the social worker for awhile and received Jordan's passport and visa. Then she left the room for about 15 minutes and we weren't sure where she went. The next thing we knew the door opened and in came the foster mother with baby Jordan! I immediately started to cry. I was so overwhelmed to see him after just staring at his picture for so many months. The foster mother (Mrs. Oh) gave me a hug and then handed Jordan over to me. He looked very interested in us, but a bit confused. We tried to make him smile and laugh, but he didn't laugh until he saw Mrs. Oh's sister. Luke covered him with kisses the second he was placed in his arms. We had a few minutes alone with him without the foster mother in the room and suprisingly enough he didn't cry. He was so fascinated with the fish in the aquarium that I don't think he even realized at first that Mrs. Oh had left the room. Tomorrow we have a meeting with Dr. Kim, the director of Eastern, lunch with other adoptive families, and another meeting with Jordan at 1:30. Enjoy the pictures of our first meeting! Notice the "throne" in the background. That's where Jordan was sitting in the first pictures we received of him.
Luke couldn't stop staring at Jordan and covering him with kisses!

Here are a couple pictures of Jordan wearing the hat that goes with his handbok (the traditional Korean outfit babies often wear on their first birthday). Doesn't he looks handsome?

We made it (but our luggage didn't!)

I'm just writing a quick post to let everyone know that we made it to our hotel in Seoul. We had very few problems except at the very beginning of our flight. Our Grand Rapids flight was delayed quite a bit so we arrived in Chicago with only 30 minutes to take a tram to a new terminal, check in again at the Korean air desk, go through security, and make it to our gate. We were one of those crazy people you see running through the airport! We are guessing that our luggage didn't make it because our connection was so tight. We aren't too concerned because the airline staff said the luggage should be delivered to our hotel in the next couple of days. The only problem is that we have our first meeting with Jordan in the morning and we had brought nice clothes for the occassion plus gifts for all the staff. Now we are stuck with the clothes on our backs which consist of jeans and t-shirts. Although we are pretty exhausted after a very long day, we are going to try to find a clothing store open nearby so we at least have something clean to wear tomorrow morning.

We'll hopefully post more tomorrow once we've had a chance to settle in a bit. We meet Jordan tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m.!

Leaving in 3 days!

In 3 short days we will be on a plane heading for Korea! We leave Grand Rapids on Monday morning at about 11:00 a.m. After a short layover in Chicago we have a direct flight to Seoul and will arrive at 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday. Seoul is 14 hours ahead of Michigan, so it will be 2:00 in the morning in Michigan when we land in Korea. Once we go through customs and gather our baggage there will be a driver waiting to drive us to our hotel where we will most likely crash for the rest of the night. The following morning we will go to Eastern (the agency in Seoul) where we will meet Jordan. When it is Tuesday evening here in Michigan we will be halfway around the world meeting our precious baby for the first time! After 2 layovers (one in Seattle and one in Denver) we will arrive back in Grand Rapids at 11:58 p.m. on Monday, August 17 as a family of three!

We plan on posting updates while we are in Korea and hope to post some pictures if possible. Stay tuned as we embark on this life changing journey!

KOREA!!!

We found out this morning that we have travel clearance, and I haven't stopped shaking since! We are currently working on booking our flights. We hope to leave on Sunday, but we may have to leave later because everything seems to be booked. I'll post again once our flights have been arranged. Our long wait is almost over!

Another month older

Jordan turns 11 months old this week, and he is still in Korea! It's hard knowing that we have missed out on almost his entire first year of life. How is it possible for us to feel so much love for someone we have never met? At least we are comforted knowing that he is being loved and cared for by his foster mother. We are expecting travel clearance to come any day, so my phone is glued to my side! I am hoping, hoping that we receive good news this week!!

In the meantime, Luke and I continue to keep ourselves as busy as possible in order to keep our minds off the wait. Even though there are a little over 5 weeks until the first day of school, my classroom is set to go- bulletin boards are up, copies are made, lesson plans are written. I have never been this ahead of the game! The only thing left to do is meet with the sub who will be taking my place during my 12 week leave, and then I won't have to go back in when we come home from Korea.

Luke and I may be eagerly anticipating the day when we can bring Jordan home, but the kittens are definitely in for a rude awakening! They have ruled the roost for over 3 years, and I don't think they will appreciate someone new taking their place. Our neighbor's baby came over for about 20 minutes last week. He started crawling towards Sushi and immediately her tail grew bushy, she gave a little hiss, and then she ran upstairs to hide. I think they will be spending a lot of time hiding under the bed during the first weeks Jordan is home!