Tuesday, December 27, 2011

happy birthday ellee



This precious brown-eyed girl has brought us 6 years of snuggling, laughter, fun stories and pure joy!! She has an effervescent personality that completely lights up any room! I am so thankful for the gift of her life!

Friday, December 23, 2011

Of Kids and Christmas

As the excitement and wonder of Christmas quickly approaches, I wanted to share a portion of a blog post from the "Desiring God" website. The post is Called Of Kids and Christmas and is written by Rachel Jankovic. The article offers a great perspective on approaching Christmas with our kiddos...

"Our celebrations aren’t supposed to be smooth, effortless bits of quiet either. They should be as big and as glorious and as spiritual and as physical as we can make them.

Clearly, the attitude with which everything is done is important. If the house is full of physical holiday cheer, but Mom is yelling about the snow boots by the door, the blending has not been complete. If Christmas dinner turns out beautifully, but no one wants to be together, something has gone wrong. But the remarkable thing is that doing it all wrong, having bad attitudes, and resenting the work will not affect the power of Christmas at all. The neighbors throwing money at their children and resenting each other will not slow down anything.

That first Christmas was enough for all time, and no amount of fussing from us about all the busy work will slow it down. We can give each other stink-eyes all day long, and the world will just go on being transformed. The only thing that we can actually damage by losing sight of the point of Christmas is our children."

I encourage you to read the entire post here.

Have a Merry Christmas!!



Wednesday, December 7, 2011

a day of change

The adoption process officially began for us in March of 2010. Truth be told, the "process" began in our hearts many, many years before that. However, we walked into our adoption agency in March of last year with absolutely no idea what lay before us. We fought our way through mounds of paperwork and endured months of waiting but finally brought our munchkin home in March of 2011. The journey wasn't over yet due to the nature of the Korea program. A six month wait had to follow his arrival before we legally finalized everything.

I'm so excited to say - TODAY WAS THE DAY!!! It was a day of great change for my sweet family...
  • Taehwan Kang became Samuel Lee Brown
  • He went from "legal alien" to US Citizen
  • We went from "guardians" to legal parents!!
Also - we are now able to go public with pictures, videos and the blog! Hence the reason you're able to read this without signing in! (And the adoption videos on here that had been blocked are not anymore!)

Just a glimpse of what today looked like...

*waiting outside the courtroom*



*inside the courtroom*

*it's final*


Words will never accurately portray this journey we've been on! Although I'm not even close to being a Grateful Dead fan, I think it can be summed up by saying, "What a long, strange trip it's been!!" God has been faithful as He always is and has taught us much about Himself and His goodness!!

**if you have not been able to access the blog until now, please take a look at what we've been up to the last seven months. we'd love to share our life with you**