Home

Hello Everyone, sorry that we have not blogged in a few days. We have been very busy getting adjusted to being home. Our plane flight home was great, Gus slept most of the way and when he wasn't sleeping he was playing peek a boo with people behind us. People offered to switch seats with us before we even asked, God is so good to us. We got home about an hour late due to ice in Detroit. All three sets of grandparents, Uncle Kyle, Aunt Courtney and Uncle Lee met us at the airport. Gus did great with his welcome home party. Lots of smiles.

Now we are working on getting settled in. Gus loves all of his toys, loves the bath tub, is crawling all over the house, loves Morgan (but needs to be reminded to us gentle hands), is eating great, is not sleeping great but that's okay we will get there, and welcomes guests like the host with the most. Beyond the lack of sleep and trying to get Gus' days and nights to American times we are all doing fantastic.

Tomorrow we have our first doctor appointment and then we plan on spending the day at home. Our visit to the great grandma's and Mars Hill was a little much yesterday and we all need a day home. I will hopefully post some new pics tomorrow and also post an update on what the doctor said.

We have to tell all of you that we for sure felt the power of prayer on our entire trip. Thank you for all of the support, love and prayers. It is wonderful to be surrounded by people who love us and Gus so much. Have a fabulous day.

Finally ours!

We have had an amazing day. We picked Gus up around 10:00 am. We spent some time having him say good bye to his caregivers. Then we bundled him up in his bear suit (thanks Jodi) and his puppy hat (thanks Mary and Abby) and took a Taxi back to our hotel. Within a couple of minutes of being at our hotel the entire place was turned upside down with toys, diapers, and clothes. We let Gus explore a little and get a grip on his surroundings. Then we changed into our swim suits and took him for his first swim. He is a little fish, fits in with our family great. He loves the water and threw his first temper tantrum when it was time to get out. We then had a bath, he liked that as well and again tears when we got out. He had some lunch, very good eater and then settled down for an hour and a half nap, on the floor of course. He woke up happy, we played with toys some more ate a banana and got to know each other some more. Then Gus ate dinner and we took a short walk outside to look at the lights of the city and the Christmas lights. Now we are back at the hotel playing with toys and bonding. He is all smiles, easily consolable when sad, and loves to giggle. He loves to play with his tongue as well.

He does have a little bit of a runny nose right now so please pray that it does not turn into anything worse or make his ears sore on the plane. We will be home soon!

DMZ

We had another busy day in Korea. When we woke up this morning we were both just wishing this day to pass quickly in order to make it Friday and get Gus. We scheduled a tour of DMZ in order to keep us busy. It was a good tour we learned a lot more about North and South Korea. We got to see many different things but we didn't get a lot of time at any of the things, they kind of rush you through everything. It was interesting and we are glad we did it but it was not our most enjoyable tourist activity here in Seoul.

We also went to amethyst factory/jewlery store. Amethysts are found in Korea and pretty inexpensive because they are so local. I bought myself an early christmas present of a amethyst necklace, it is very simple and was very reasonable in price.

Then we went to a Korean restaurant and had bibophim, a warm pot full of rice, korean veggies, some spices, and a sunny side up egg on top. Very delicious. We ended our meal with a cup of korean coffee, it is found in most restaurants and it is about ten cents, it is like a shot of cappucino, sweet, warm and yummy.

Our tour guide, Sophie dropped us off at Itaewon which is a very modern, westernized shopping area. We found the last gift we had been looking for there. We took the subway back to our hotel, we are getting pretty good at the subway and it is so cheap and safe.

Now we are packing up stuff so that we can just concentrate on Gus tomorrow. It is crazy to pack up all of the Gus' unworn clothes. It's okay though, we are trying to make room for the extra stuff we are coming home with. Everything is coming together nicely. We are planning on laying low tonight. I am going to go workout and then soak in the hot tub. Then we will probably catch a quick bite to eat and attempt to get a good nights sleep. We don't know when we will get another uninterrupted night of sleep, Gus still wakes up at 2:00am for a feeding.

Have a fantastic Thursday, Friday is coming soon!

City Tour Day

Wow did we have a busy day today. We woke up and had some time to talk to my mom on facebook which was nice. Then we enjoyed a quick breakfast and headed to Holt to meet our volunteer tour guide for the day. Jihyeon Oh was our tour guide, she is trying to get to know English better so helping us was in turn helping her. She was an absolute delight and her English was fantastic. We started out our day with a tour of Gyeongbokgung Palace. Wow it was beautiful and we learned so much about old Korean culture. We also got to see in the distance the Blue House which is equivalent to the White House where their president lives. All of this was in the middle of city.

After the palace tour it was time to shop! I was pretty excited to buy some gifts. The shopping area is called Insadong and it reminds me of a flea market but with small indoor stores instead of all being outside. Everything is pretty reasonably priced. It has a lot of souvenir items. Jason and I bought some gifts for people and then purchased come authentic Korean items for our home. We bought: a wall hanging that says in Korean: My Happy Home, a beautiful wooden chopstick set that serves six people, a small picture that has ducks flying home in it which symbolizes family finally coming together or returning home (we are hoping to display this in our home with our names written in Korean), and we bought some wonderful Korean sweets to bring home and have everyone try.

We wanted to buy a traditional hanbok for each of us and Gus. Insadong had some but they were very pricy. With the help of our tour guide we were able to find a place that sold them at a much cheaper price. We went over to a different market which was much more flea market style. This had everything from fresh fish, to bedding, to fabric and other souvenirs. We came across a little stand selling hanbok and between the owner of the shop and Jihyeon Oh we were able to pick one out for me, very feminine and colorful, one for Gus to fit him in a couple of years (we should get his from his first birthday party and we are hoping that will still fit him now), and one for Jason which matches both Gus' and mine. It was a great deal where we got it but still a splurge for something that we will not wear very often. We both felt it was well worth it and that we would treasure them forever, much like we do our dutch costumes :)

While out shopping we were able to eat another traditional Korean meal, it was very tasty and gave us a chance to warm up from being outside in the cold all day.

When we got back to the hotel around 4:00 we were both pretty tired and cold, we soaked in the hot tub, tried to learn a little Korean with a book we picked up, and took a little nap. We ended our day by going across the street to a little sandwich shop for dinner. Although we have been enjoying the Korean food it was nice to taste something a little more normal for our palettes. We took it back to our hotel room for a late dinner.

We are winding down and thinking about hitting the hay soon. Tomorrow morning we are going on a tour of the DMZ. We leave at 8:00am and return to our hotel around 2:30pm, it will be a lot of history, walking and being outside in the cold again. We also hope to get over to the world cup stadium. Can you guess who planned our day for tomorrow?

We are both ready for it to be Friday when we get to take Gus with us. We do have one prayer request: our plane tickets for the ride home do not have us sitting together on any of our flights, we are fairly close but not next to each other. Please pray that people will have compassion on us and be willing to switch seats to get us together and on an aisle so we can walk with Gus if we need to. God has been so great to us throughout this trip and we feel that has so much to do with all of prayer support we have back home. Thank you. You all have a wonderful Wednesday!

Best Day Ever!

We finally met Gus today. We started our day with a 6:30 wake-up call. We anxiously got ready, ate some breakfast, and rode the subway over to Holt. We met DJ the overseas social worker at Holt. We then traveled about an hour to Ilsan. The drive was very pretty, mountains surround the city. When we got to Ilsan we met the superviser and Molly Holt. Then we took a short walk across campus to where Gus lives. As soon as we entered the door, there he was in the arms of his house mother. She instantly handed him to me. He smiled and cuddled into my arms. Holding him and kissing was indescribable. I handed him to Jason and Jason lifted him high in the air and we saw an even bigger smile. His face just lights up when he smiles. After Jason hugged him he reached back out for me and I took him back in my arms and we embraced in a family hug, our new family felt complete. We then took him into the play room and showed him all of the fun toys we had brought him. He loved the bear puppet, elephant puppet and the touchy feel book. Whenever he gets a new toy he looks at it and then pulls it up over his head, its very cute. We were able to play and interact with him. He sat in both of our laps, cuddled with us and then started getting very tired. He sleeps on the floor so we started getting into his sleep position. Then he flipped onto his back and started crying, his whole face scrunched up. I quickly scooped him up. I held him to me kissed his face and patted his back. He was asleep in my arms within about five minutes. He was so comfortable he started snoring! What a sweetie. We layed him down on his blanket and said good bye it was so hard to leave him but at least we know that come Friday at 10:00 am we will be able to take him with us.

We got a chance to talk with his house mother for a while and get a lot of our questions answered. He eats three times a day a rice porridge. He also eats smashed bananas and yogurt. He has a sweet tooth and his favorite food is Strawberry yoplait yogurt. He is not feeding himself yet. He drinks soy milk and rice powder mixed in water, both out of a straw sippy cup during the day and out of bottle at night before bed and then around 2:00 am. He sleeps from 9:00pm-7:00am with the feeding at 2:00am. He is still taking two naps one from 9:00-10:30 and one from 2:00-4:00pm. He likes to sleep and would sleep more if they let him but they keep him on a strict schedule. He gets hot while he sleeps and will crawl around on the floor trying to find the coolest place. When he is tired he gets fussy and will hit head on the floor, the same when he gets hungry. We are assuming that is how he gets his bumps on his head. His favorite things are the taggy balnket I made for him, a toy drum, thomas the train dvd's and cars that you can pull back and watch go. He can manuever a little slide all by himself including crawling up the wrong way. He is an absolute joy everyone just adores him.

The rest of our day was full of meeting people and seeing places. We enjoyed a wonderful lunch with Molly Holt at a traditional Korean barbeque wow the food was fabulous. We sat on the floor, ate with chopsticks, and left our shoes in the entry way. Molly's parents were the original founders of Holt and now she lives on Ilsan's campus and helps run the ministry. She is very passionate about what she does and cares very much about Gus. After lunch we said good bye to Ilsan and headed to the Holt orphanage where Gus used to live. The entire staff was elated to see us, they miss Gus and just adore him. They gave us some pictures from when he was younger including one from his first birthday party. Everyone was so friendly. DJ was able to translate our conversations.

Later we went to bookstore to get a couple of kids books in Korean for Gus. We bought a Thomas the Train book for the airplane and then we bought the giving tree in Korean. The bookstore was a lot like a barnes and noble just filled with Korean books.

This evening DJ picked us up at our hotel and took us out to dinner. We had a wonderful time getting to know her better. She is a wonderful woman. She speaks wonderful English. She lived in Ada for a little while so it was fun to name places that she remembered from Michigan and tell her about where we live because she recognized so much of it. She then gave us a little car tour of Seoul.

We are now back at the Hotel, trying to wind down from our amazing day. Jason is in the living room watching Korean soccer and I am planning on trying to get some pictures up on facebook.

Tomorrow we will be going on city tour, then we have Thursday to ourselves and pick up Gus at Holt on Friday morning at 10:00 am. Things are going wonderful! Check out facebook for the pictures that is where I will hopefully be able to post them.

First full day in Korea

We have had a great day in Korea. We started out with an amazing breakfast at our hotel. The food was fantastic. Then we talked with DJ at Holt and found out that we would be meeting Gus at 10:30 on Tuesday morning at Ilsan. Since we had the whole day we decided to explore Seoul. Jason took the lead he is much better at maps than me especially when they are in Korean. Our first stop was the subway to get our passes for tomorrow morning, then we decided to go visit a palace right down the street, well that was a bust because it wasn't open. So we went back to the map and found a sunny spot to stand in. While doing that we met a very helpful couple who must have known we were tourists. They encouraged us to go see Cheonggyecheon river, this is a reclaimed natural area that has turned from pretty much a sewer into a beautiful stream that runs for about 3 km with a wonderful path all along it. It was so pretty, we could even stone hop across it. While exploring that we came across a tourism organization. One week a month they have traditional korean activities for free. We had our names, including Gus', written in Korean calligraphy and then we were able to try on the traditional hanbok. I was a princess and Jason was a military man. Very cool we hope we will have time to take Gus back there and have him try on an outfit. We went back to the hotel and got our gifts ready for tomorrow and relaxed a little before our dinner excursion. We went to a traditional Korean music and dance dinner theater tonight. It was in a different part of the city but they picked us up which was nice. We enjoyed a wonderful buffet of korean food including crab legs, octopus, mandarin oranges and duck. Some of the food was wonderful and some of it not quite what we are used to. We were very adventrous and tried many things we had never had before. I will say the desserts here are nothing like at home, I miss my chocolate. The show was fabulous. The costumes were beautiful, the instruments were unique, and the dancing was intricate and synchronized to perfection. All around the evening was a lot of fun.

We are both feeling the effects of a lot of travel, some dizziness and very tired. We decided to hit the hay a little early tonight in order to be our best for when we meet the Gus man tomorrow. We will have some time with him but we don't know how much and then we will get more information on other times we will either see him or be able to take him with us. As of right now we will not have complete custody until Friday at 2:30. Mamma and Daddy are struggling with that a little and hope that we can maybe change that if we are able to. We will keep you all updated. As you read this on Monday morning know that when I am writing it, it is Monday night. Have a great Monday! ours was wonderful.

Meeting Gus time

We just talked to Holt and we will be meeting Gus at 10:30 tomorrow morning at Ilsan. We are so excited. We still are not for sure as to when we get to take him with us. We will be going on the Holt City tour on Wednesday. Today we hope to get acclimated with the city, check out a museum and hopefully see a traditional Korean dinner show. Very exciting. We will fill you in on what we really did later.

Good Morning!

Everything is still going great. We slept about 6 hours and then were ready to get going with our day. The breakfast was fantastic, really yummy and lots of things to try. We are ready to face the day. Jason is on the phone with holt right now and it sounds like we will be meeting Gus tomorrow. Today we will hopefully do some sight seeing, the DMZ is closed today so we will not be going there. I would like to get going and explore. I guess Ilsan is having a good bye party for Gus tonight. We are not sure if we will be meeting him at Holt or Ilsan, we will call back in a couple of hours and get more info then. In the meantime we are going to check out the rest of the hotel and get some subway passes for the week. We will continue to keep you updated. This little momma can't stop smiling!

Arrived in Korea

We finally made it to Korea!! All the travels went super smooth. A big thank you to nana and papa for waking up early with us and bringing us to GR. We actually arrived in Korea at 930 pm (korean standard time), which was about 730 am (est) . The greatest thing about the long flight was meeting people who had been to Korea and are currently living there. They gave us great advice about getting taxis to our hotel, when and where to exchange money, etc. However, when we finally got through customs and immigration it was all for naught. Holt had hired a driver for us and was waiting with a sign with our name on it. AWESOME!!! We had been told it would be a miracle if there was going to be someone there. GOD IS AWESOME! MIRACLES ARE GREAT! MIRACLES IN KOREA ARE EVEN COOLER (from this perspective currently). A big thank you also to Belinda and all those at Bethany and Tempo Travel agency for getting us to this point! We got to the hotel at about 1030 or 11pm. unpacked (Emily did this) and Jason attempted to get computer up and running. Jason was semi-successful in this endeavor, the only set back was getting this here blog spot not to be in Korean. It finally worked after getting 6 hours of sleep and patience being restored. We are looking forward to the day, dawn is breaking currently. Emily is still sleeping and I am getting hungry. Perhaps its time to wander around Seoul and find some good food to prepare for the day.

Time to Sleep?

Well here we are the night before we leave. Our bags are packed, emotions are high, God's faithful words of knowing the plans he has for us keep ringing in my head, plans to prosper us and give us a future as a family. Wow, the lessons we have learned in the past ten almost eleven months. God's love has taken us through each bump, each waiting day and the craziness of today. Hopefully we will both be able to sleep a little tonight before we begin our journey tomorrow. We will be departing the house at 4:45 am if any of you are up say a quick prayer that I will be calm and hear God's voice loud and clear, I did not realize until today that I am a little scared to travel internationally. Tomorrow starts a new journey for the Perton family and we are ready, we think. We will keep this updated. Thanks for all of the loving comments and excitement, it is so appreciated.

travel day and times

So, we are leaving on a flight bright and early Saturday morning. First stop is Detroit then Tokyo then arrive in Seoul about 9:30 pm Sunday night, which is 8:30 am our time. Crazy! We are staying at the Frasier Palace in downtown Seoul. It is very nice, it is apartment style so we will be able to cook some of our own meals. Plus it has a kiddy pool and play area for the Jason(maybe Gus will like it too.) We will be back home on Saturday the 19th at 4:30 pm arriving in GR. All three sets of grandparents will be eagerly waiting for their new grandsons arrival. We are bringing the computer and will be updating the blog as frequently as we are able to. We are not yet sure when we will actually be meeting Gus.

Current prayer requests: safe travel, bonding with Gus, Emily's crazy emotions, Jason's lack of emotion, Morgan's good behavior, and a magic house cleaner to make the house just what Emily wants for Gus when we get home.

TRAVEL CALL!

Today at about 1:00 we received a call from Belinda inviting us to travel to get Gus!!!! We are elated, to say the least. We will for sure have him by Christmas. We are both in shock, we just keep wandering around with our cell phones thinking what do we do now. We are currently waiting to hear back from Tempo with some options of when we will travel. As soon as we hear anything we will update you more. We should meet our precious little son within four days, YEA!!!!

Please thank God with us for this wonderful news!