Wyoming

Greetings from beautiful Wyoming! We flew into Jackson Hole yesterday. Today (in Dubois, WY) one of our best friends, "Uncle Coy" is marrying his lovely Angela. Coy and Joel worked & lived together for several years before we got married. Coy was in our wedding & we are so excited to be here for his. Tomorrow we will head to Yellowstone National Park for several days and round out our vacation week with a couple more days in Jackson Hole before heading home. I am sure we will come home with lots of photos of all the beauty here.

Backing up to Father's Day

We had a very sweet weekend celebrating Joel/Daddy. Kylee & I bought, created & wrapped gifts on Friday so it would be done while Joel was at work. But it was very hard for Kylee to wait to give the gifts to Daddy. Saturday morning around 6am (a normal waking hour for her) she comes into our room carrying Daddy's gift bag. I saw her and quickly got up and tried to explain to her that the gift was for Sunday-Father's Day. She started bawling. She didn't understand why she couldn't give the gifts that morning. But she did eventually settle down. Later that day she took Daddy into the room where the gift was hiding and showed him where the gift was & said, "that's for you...but not yet." Well Sunday/Father's Day finally came. We woke to find the gift in our room and Kylee wanting Daddy to open his present. He did open the gifts and found not only the gifts we had wrapped, but also 2 door stops that Kylee had taken from the wall & decided to add. It was pretty funny! She was happy to say "Happy Father's Day" multiple times through out the day. In fact she continued to say it a couple of times Monday & Tuesday. Of course Daddy loved it! Sunday was a nice relaxing day. In the afternoon Daddy took Kylee to buy some baseball stuff her size. They spent sometime playing catch & hitting the ball. It was too cute & special Daddy/Daughter time. Thank you Joel for being an amazing Husband & Father. Your girls love you!

DTSK!

We received this email from our adoption agency this afternoon....

Hi Shauna and Joel:

Congratulations! We are happy to let you know that we sent your dossier to Korea today. You are one step further in the adoption process. Generally speaking, the time between dossier submission and referral is currently averaging six to eight months. We will, of course, notify you immediately when we receive your referral to schedule a time for you to review it at the Barker offices.

Yay!


The Namdaemun in Seoul at night.

GOT IT!

Each day for the past few weeks, when I check the mail, I have half hoped to find our Immigration approval (I171-H). But as I said earlier we weren't really expecting it to be here before the end of July. Well yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to open my mailbox and see it waiting for me! Yay! So what was supposed to take 9 weeks, came in 4 1/2. Today I am mailing a copy of it to our agency, who should get it on Monday. Our packet should be ready to head to S Korea! We're a bit closer to baby brother or sister!


HyangWonJeong in Gyeongbokgung, Seoul

Grandmom Visits

This week we had the pleasure of Grandmom visiting from TX. It was a sweet and special 5 days. Kylee is already saying she misses her. We made a trip to the pool, visited the US Botanic Garden, enjoyed the nice weather by eating outdoors several times, played the Wii & of course took Grandmom on our favorite walk to feed the geese and walk the bridge. Kylee kept Grandmom busy reading books, building blocks and doing puzzles. Thanks for visiting Grandmom & Mom. We do miss you already.

Announcement

We are very excited to announce our newest journey, to baby #2! This time we will be headed to South Korea to find baby brother or sister. We began the paperchase in January and are at the end of that "chase". We are currently waiting on that much coveted approval to adopt document from USCIS (immigration). We expect it to arrive by the end of July. Then our stack of papers heads to South Korea where it will be matched with our baby. We hope to be travelling to S.K. by next spring or summer.


Seoul Olympic Park

Wordless Wednesday

Summer Time With Friends

We have had a fun couple of weeks enjoying the sunshine, outdoors and awesome friends! We have been to the park, the zoo, back yard swim, DC touring, etc. Despite alot of rain lately, we have managed to find and appreciate every minute of the nice weather days. We have also had friends visiting from TX that we hadn't seen in more than 2 years. They have 3 wonderful little boys...Brandon (6 yrs), Ryan (4 yrs) & baby Declan (1 month). Kylee lovingly coined the older two "her guys" & the little one, "Baby Duckling". It was so good to see them and spend time with them! We hope it won't be 2 years before we see them again. Thanks for spending much of your family vacation with us!
Kylee's best friend Sybella has a new baby brother too, "Baby Cooper". Kylee is fascinated by babies and is very sweet & gentle with them.
Our summer still holds lots of fun planned and we are loving every minute. Grandmom P visits next week in addition to two short visits with a couple of Joel's friends, one from TX & one from NE. The end of this month, we have a trip planned to WY to attend a special wedding & vacation in Yellowstone. We hope to go to the beach in August. We may have some other visitors & in the mix we also plan to make it to the pool as many days as possible in the next few months before Preschool! Yay, Summer!

At the park with Miss Sharon, Sybella & Baby Cooper





Back Yard Swim Day With Friends



TX Friends, The Topfs

Chris, Erin, Brandon, Ryan & Declan



Ryan & Brandon hiding from the camera



Gotcha!



Kylee, "Her Guys" & "Baby Duckling"



Zoo With Church Friends



Touring DC