We're Here!!!!

I love this country! Barton and I have been here 3 times in the last 4 years. We came here the first time on a family vacation. We traveled with my mother, my sister, and my brother-in-law. We did a lot of sightseeing and visited with many extended family members who live here. It was a great trip. We returned in December 2006 to bring home our beautiful babe, Malea. Since we had been here the year before, we didn't feel the pressure of sightseeing. We just relaxed and soaked up the experience. This trip we have our oldest son, Tyler, with us and want to make this a rich experience for him. So we will be sightseeing quite a bit and hopefully meeting with some extended family members. We're so excited he's with us. We wish we could have brought all of the children, but that would be too much for this trip - we'll be back though one day with everyone!

Our trip here was very smooth with many answered prayers already. We made it to the airport easily (thank you Amy!) and checked in for our flight quickly. We had no seat assignments when we got to the airport due to the flight being full and our flights being booked so late. However, they gave us 3 great seats together. We flew Korean Air which is wonderful!! We didn't sleep much, but we watched a ton of movies. Each seat has an individual screen with movies, games, shows, etc. That made the time go by much easier. We arrived in Korea and flew through immigration. No lines! By the way, my packing buddies - Lisa and Lynne - the box of donations made it here in one piece! No exploding lotions!! (More on that later.) A van driver sent by Holt met us at the airport and brought us to the hotel. The hotel is awesome. It is an extended stay facility - the Somerset Palace. We had trouble securing a room here earlier this week, but with the prayers of my sweet Brooklyn and others, we got an executive suite at a discounted rate for the week! I'll post pictures of it later. It's like a studio apartment with laundry, kitchen, etc. in the room. It is in a great part of town - right by many sightseeing areas all within walking distance.

We got to our hotel around 6 p.m. local time, got settled, and wandered around for a Korean restaurant. We found a small one with a Korean BBQ. The beautiful ladies did not speak any English and our Korean is limited so it was an interesting experience for Tyler! We found ways to communicate though and had a wonderful first meal here! One woman was very tickled at our efforts to communicate with her. I finally had to resort to showing her phrases in Korean from my Korean/English dictionary to say "thank you for a wonderful meal" and "everything was delicious!!!" She was very sweet and touched. Since Barton about fell asleep on the grill in the middle of our table, we made our way back to the hotel and to bed. We took some great sleeping pills (thank you Steve!), fell asleep about 8:30 p.m., and had a pretty restful night. We woke up a couple of times, but really managed to get a lot of sleep.

This morning we relaxed, talked with our beautiful children back home who are being loved on by grandma and friends (thank you so much!), and headed to the breakfast buffet. We're about to wander around the area and take a tour to the DMZ today.

We need to acknowledge that we would not be here if it wasn't for the help of so many people!!!! The last several weeks have been pretty stressful and busy. Barton has been working on finishing a room in the basement for Tyler, I've been pretty sick for quite a while, and we've been doing so many other things to get ready for a new baby in the house. Thank you, thank you to all of the people who have helped with construction, meals, shopping, donations for Holt, errands, packing, rides for kids, prayers, childcare, etc. I'm sure I've left out some things and I don't dare list names because I know I'd forget someone. We truly are so grateful to everyone for your kindness, generosity and friendship. We love you all and feel so blessed to have you all in our lives.