I hope this is it

What a week this has been! Last Thursday night, I was planning to post a "send me off to Korea" message on this blog when we got the call. My son wasn't ready to come home. He was in the hospital with bronchilitis and would probably be there for a week.

The whole week was very emotional for all of us. We had gone from feeling so excited about finally welcoming Dong Joon into our family to immense worry about his health and well-being. Every day we would anxiously await for a phone call from our agency, but the daily reports did not yield much information. And of course there was the disappointment of having to wait longer to bring him home. We yearned to hold our boy and be with him.

Finally, today we got some good news. Dong Joon would be discharged from the hospital and be ready to travel. We were asked if we wanted to pick him up or have him escorted. Of course I immediately said I would go and pick him up. Ever since we knew we were going to adopt Dong Joon, I dreamed of traveling to his place of birth to see where he spent his first months of life. I want to tell him all about it when it is time for him to visit his birthplace.

Although we are very happy to be making this journey, we are also a little sad that we cannot make the trip as a family. Erek and I agonized over this. We would have liked to both go and meet Dong Joon and possibly bring Veronica, but we decided that the whole trip would be too difficult to make with both children. We also did not want to leave Veronica home without one of us to stay with her. She has never been away from both of us for more than a day. We want her to have a positive experience when she meets her little brother for the first time! We hope that someday we can go to Korea and the Philippines as a family so both of our children will learn about their unique ancestries.

My bags are packed. My documents are in order. I don't think I will get much sleep tonight. Hopefully I will get to post while I am in Seoul. Otherwise I will have Erek update the blog. So for now, I'm signing off.