The Guest Room

Dear any friends and family hoping to stay with us over the next 3 weeks:  Good luck finding the bed.  Our guest room has been temporarily transformed into a the Korea stuff holding center.  The bed is littered with books, presents, flight itinerary, Korean Won, suitcases, maps, travel books, toys, mac-n-cheese cups (yes, mac-n-cheese cups...we are traveling with a 4 year old after all), gift bags, etc.  For the past few months, we have had a small pile of stuff hidden away in our storage room, but it has grown exponentially in the last 48 hours and made its way to the guest room.

Yesterday we knocked out a good couple of lists of things to do/buy before trip.  I know we have 3 weeks before we leave (exactly 3 weeks) but I would like to sleep peacefully at least a few times in those 21 days.  Ever since Tuesday I find myself waking up at 4am unable to fall back to sleep as too many "to do" lists are running through my head.  Sign Jae up for a Delta miles card.  Pick up an extra suitcase from my parents.  Get social worker presents.  Buy gift bags for all presents.  My brain hasn't put in this much overtime since, well, probably since the last trip to Korea.


But man, are we getting excited!  Jae and I made a paper chain to count down the days until we leave and I think all three of us really enjoy the act of  Jae ripping off the bottom link every morning.  In fact, this morning he was super cute about it...he practically sprinted over to the chain.  :) 

Love,
Jae and Violet's Mom


Ps - The Herzog Family, along with two other families, hold the new ESWS record for longest wait from Court Submission to Court Notification:  137 days.  The previous record was 130.  Not the kind of record we were hoping to set, but moving on...

Court Date!

Oh happy day!  Finally.


Tuesday morning (Jan 13) at 8:39 we received the long awaited phone call that we were finally assigned a court date.  I was the lucky one to take the phone call...right in the middle of a business meeting with my two bosses.  :)  Paul quickly made his way down to my department where a few tears were shed before we grabbed our belongings to rush over to a local travel agent to book plane tickets.  Although court isn't for another 3 weeks we still needed to rush for plane tickets to guarantee agency housing in Korea.  The first ones that provide their flight itinerary to the agency gets their name at the top of the list for housing.  And if you remember from our adoption of Jae, agency housing runs from $50 to $90 a night and has a kitchen and laundry area.  Area hotels easily run $200+.  We wanted housing for, obviously, the cost savings but also for the familiarity.  We know where it is, the nearest subway stop, grocery stores, and Pizza Hut (don't judge, comfort food is a necessity on this trip).  I think we had flights booked within 30 minutes of getting the call!  Paul and I must have been quite a  site running into the travel agent, professionally dressed and red eyed from crying tears of joy demanding tickets, but it all worked out.


So we leave Sunday Feb 8th at 9am, connect in Seattle and then on to Seoul.  Because we cross the international date line, we will arrive Feb 9th at 5pm.   Our schedule is pretty busy from there on out.  Tuesday we have a visa appointment AND MEET VIOLET FOR THE FIRST TIME!  Wednesday is our only true free day, Thursday is another meeting with Vi as well as lunch with the President of our Korea agency.  Friday we report for court at 9:30 for our 11:20 appointment and then fly home on Valentines Day.  We are also hoping to get together with Jae's foster family and do some site seeing and shopping while we are there.


To be clear, Violet will not be coming home with us on this trip.  We will have to wait 2 or 3 weeks after our court date to receive Final Approval.  At that time just Paul and I will fly back to forever take her in our arms!


And yes, Jae is excited.  Although when we told him we have a surprise he acted slightly disappointed and then asked if he could still get Police Legos.  :)


Now that things are rolling, I will post on a much more regular basis.  For now, back to my excessing list making and contributing to the constantly growing pile of things that need to come with us on the trip!


Love,
Jae and Violet's Mom

74 Days of Waiting

We drew the short stick, hypothetically of course.  There are 4 judges in Korea that work with adoption cases, and one of the four is known to be ridiculously slow.  Crazy slow.  And as luck would have it, that judge picked up the Herzog file.  Boo. 


It is kind-of hard to explain, but with the adoption process you move as a group.  Files are prepped together.  Files go into the Ministry together.  Leave the Ministry together.  Submitted to Court together.  Together up until this point when you are assigned to different judges.  Families in our group that got "faster" judges have already received court dates.  Many have already appeared in court and received Preliminary approval.  Some are probably on the verge of final approval and  custody of their child.  We don't even have a court date yet. It is hard to watch so many families move forward with the process and we are at a standstill.


However, it does make it a little easier to get up every morning when the alarm goes off.  The first thing that pops in my head every morning at 4:45 is "Maybe today is the day."  Unfortunately my optimism usually fades pretty quickly around 10:00AM - -or has for the past 74 days.  Maybe day 75 will be our lucky one?


Love,
Jae and Violet's Mom

Ready For a Court Date

Still waiting to be assigned a court date.  Every morning we are very optimistic as the call should be coming any day.  The list of people waiting for a court assignment keeps slowly getting shorter and shorter, just a matter of when our number gets called.  Stay tuned.


Love,
Jae and Violet's Mom

Random Photos From the last Few Months

EP Approved

Just about a week ago we got the crazy news that Violet's EP was approved after only 15 short days!  It is normal for this to take 4 to 8 weeks so we were blown away when we got the email from our Korean Adoption specialist that Violet had been approved.  If you look at the timeline on the right, you will see Jae's EP approval took basically 3 months.  Not 3 weeks, 3 months.  Blown away that she was approved (as well as the rest of the group) in only 15 days!


From what happens here on out is new to us.  The laws in Korea changed right after Jae came home.  So again looking at the timeline on the right, the only step for Jae after EP approval was a quick US Visa appointment and then the travel call.  Well the new law states we must appear in Korean court to finalize the adoption.  Which is exactly what we are waiting for now, a court date.  Violet's paper work should be submitted to Court any day now (which really means her file is basically being handed over to the judicial system) and then we will be assigned a court date.  Once we have the court date we can start making travel plans for our first trip.  But we are at the mercy judge that is assigned our case or more specifically, his or her schedule.  What else he or she has scheduled, vacation, etc. 


In the meantime we stay busy with project with our new (old) house.  Painting touch ups, fixing/winterizing the pool, replacing light fixtures and fans, etc.  As well as doing our best to spend good quality one on one time with Jae. 


Love,
Jae and Violet's Mom

Begining of the End

Time to hop back on the blog!  Thing are rolling for the our little Miss Violet over in Korea so it is time to keep everyone informed of what is going on.


One week ago today Violet's paperwork was submitted to the Korean Foreign Ministry for the purpose of Emigration Permission (AKA - permission to leave the country).  This is a huge step and basically the bottleneck of the adoption process.  We were over the moon to get this news last week!  Big, huge, gigantic step forward!  Now we wait for the approval of her Emigration Permission (EP) which can take anywhere from 4 to 8 weeks. There is a chance that we are on the lower end of that spectrum because it appears to be a small group that was submitted to the government.   Without going into a lot of details, you go into the government as a group and you leave as a group.  So once you know you made the cut, you want it (for purely selfish reasons) to be as small of a group as possible in hopes they can process things faster.  Time will tell.


Once we have EP approval we will be assigned a court date and will travel!  It really is the beginning of the end.  But unlike Jae's adoption, we will take 2 different trips due to some Korean law changes.  The first being the court appearance that I just mentioned, and then the next trip will be anywhere from 3-6 weeks later to go get Violet and bring her home.


I will try and post weekly and get some updated pictures up here.  And the times we actually do travel, I will try and post daily. 


Excited to finally become a family of four!!


Love,
Jae and Violet's Mom