Fingerprints Complete!

It's been a long time since we have posted.  Time and Technology are not my friends lately.  I think it has also been really difficult for us to feel that this is real.  It is easy to forget we are adopting again.  Don't get us wrong we think about our next little one and pray for him or her so often but because we do not have a child in mind it is hard  for reality to set in.

We do have another step on the process complete though! We had our immigration fingerprints done on Tuesday morning.  We were thrilled that they squeezed us in three weeks before our appointment.  Trust me they weren't as thrilled about it as we were but we decided to play the mama bear and papa bear card and didn't worry too much about upsetting a fine government employee :) 

So where are we now you may ask.  We are waiting to get our final immigration approval back, should be a week or two yet, but perhaps longer and we are supposed to be working on our Dossier.  A Dossier is a pile of official paperwork that gets sent to Hong Kong.  The point of the Dossier is to show who we are to the Hong Kong Government as well as the orphanage.  Then they have to approve us and then we will get matched with a child.  So time frame, the famous adoption question.  I'm thinking 9 months yet.

Fundraising update: it is really hard for us to write down the total amount it will cost to get our little one home but I feel that we need to let people know this time since we are fundraising.  It will be a total cost of $25,000.  We have been so blessed already and have raised $6,000!  As you can see we still have a ways to go.  The support we have received from family, friends, and other wonderful people who believe in adoption has been humbling and breathtaking. If you are still interested in joining us in our fundraising efforts you can still buy Tshirts for $15 or you can donate money to Jason as he competes in three different triathlons this summer. 

This journey is so different than our journey to get Gussers home.  Please continue to pray for us as we complete paperwork, fill out grant applications, and wait to be matched with our next child.  Thank you for all of your loving support.

T-shirts!

We officially have the T-shirt design nailed down and are ready to start taking orders. We are so excited because the T-shirts turned out wonderful and it feels like we are taking the next step in this wonderful journey. So here is the scoop on the T-shirts. Each shirt will be $15, there are three color options for children size small through adult XL. The choices are: a bright magenta pink with a white tree and words, a lime green with a bright blue tree and words or a dark grey with a white tree and words. There are also toddler and infant size shirts for $15. The onsies are size 6 month, 12 month or 24 month. The toddler T-shirts are size 2T-5T. All of the toddler and infant shirts will be bright blue with lime green tree and words. If you would like to order a shirt please respond to me by email (eperton@gmail.com), facebook or by replying to this blog post. Let me know what color and size you would like. All checks can be made out to Emily Perton. We hope that the turnaround time for getting the shirts in your hands will be about 1 week.

Thank you so much for considering supporting the adoption by purchasing
a T-shirt.

As far as the process goes we are still waiting for our completed home study. It has taken a little longer than expected but we remain patient. Once the home study is in our hands we can send out immigration paperwork and work on the Dossier.

We also have our biggest fundraiser the Mom 2 Mom sale quickly approaching on April 21. We are humbled by how much support we have been given through people renting tables, donating items to sell, and volunteering to help out on the day of the sale.

Thank you all for your prayers and support :)

Here we go again!

So this begins round two. Our home study is complete we are officially in the adoption process again! We couldn't be more excited to share this journey with you all. You prayers, support, and love through getting Gus home made all the difference in the world. Each positive comment, promise of prayer, and loving thought sent our way got us through each day of the adoption journey. So now as we begin the process to get our little one home from Hong Kong we eager to share the journey with you all again.

I have a feeling my blog posts will not be as long this time around. With young Gussy man running around at home I don't have near as much time on my hands. I am sure this journey will look much different, it already has. Some of you may know we started this process to adopt again in the domestic infant program. We were struggling with finding peace to come along that decision. In the past three weeks God has changed our minds and hearts. He has opened our eyes to the Country of Hong Kong and the desire to adopt another child with special needs. We do not have a child in mind this time. We would like a child between birth and two and if it is another child with down syndrome we would prefer a boy. We would like Gus to have a brother who always understands and for our next little one to have Gussers to help him out. Also we are thinking about the future and would like the two of them to live together. Now, as we have learned already so many times in our journey to complete our small branch of the Perton family tree, we plan and God decides. I am really starting to like this plan even better, LOOK AT GUS! God knows what he is doing :)

So I am sure you are all wondering time lines, details and how you can help :) I will do my best to answer. We are hoping to have our national bethany office signed home study by the end of this week and then we can send out immigration paperwork. Currently immigration is taking 3-4 months. Once we get our immigration work back we will have our Dossier ready to send to Hong Kong. Processing of the Dossier is also taking 3-4 months, by then we will hopefully be matched with our child. Then we should travel to Hong Kong within the next 3-4 months. So best case scenario is 9 months and worst case is around 16 months. Knowing us and our love to travel to Asia two weeks before Christmas we have that penciled in :)

How can you help? I am so glad you asked! We are two years and three months from getting Gussers home. You may not be aware of the cost of international adoption but it is quite costly to process all of that paperwork I mentioned above. We will again be applying for grants, please keep this process in your prayers. We will also be doing some fundraising this time. We are fundraising in three different ways: 1) Mark your calendars for a Mom 2 Mom Sale at Providence Church on Saturday, April 21 from 9am-12pm. If you are interested in a renting a table in order to sell used and new baby, child, tween or maternity items like your own personal garage sale the cost will be $25. If you are looking to purchase used or new baby, child, tween, or maternity items the cost to get into the sale will $2 per person. 2) We will be selling T-shirts with an amazing family tree design created by our good friend Jenna Green. The cost of the t-shirts will be $15 and you can order them through emailing me or replying to this blog post. eperton@gmail.com. 3) Finally, Jason will be competing in three different triathlons this summer, if you would like to sponsor him in this event please let us know. We are trying to create where you can give money on the blog, wait for it :)

Most importantly we are asking for your prayer support again. The journey of adopting is bumpy and having prayer support makes the bumps easier to come by. Please pray for our future child, their birth parents, little Gus and adapting to a brother and sister, and Jason as I as we prepare our home and hearts for the second Perton child. Thank you so much for caring about our family and taking the time to read about what we are up. God Bless!

Cardiologist and ENT

I know we have not been so good with the blog thing, who knew that chasing a toddler around the house would cause you to have no time to blog. Plus who knew the toddler wouldn't sleep and therefore we wouldn't sleep. Anyways, life is good we are busy but loving every minute. What a joy our little Gus is. We are so blessed and so thankful for every day.

So we have had a few Dr. appointments this week. The first was to the ENT to check out Gus' tiny ear canals and hearing. Gus did great his ear canals are about the size of a mm and they do have some wax in them both have caused him to have minor hearing loss. He was a such a little trooper. The ENT in Holland is referring us to an ENT in GR so that we can coordinate when Gus has to be put under for other procedures to have his ears cleaned out and then also to have a better hearing test done.

Yesterday was the Cardiologist, what a long day we were at Devos Children's Hopstial from 9:30 until 1:00. Again Gus did great! The Dr. was so pleased with the results of the ultrasound and heart test. Gus is showing only slight symptoms of pulmonary hypertension, he is only showing the ASD heart defect not the PSD like they had said. He will not be needing heart surgery anytime soon! YEA What an answer to prayer. Right now we are going to wean him off of his meds and see what happens to his pulmonary hypertension. We are also meeting with the pulmonologist next week Thursday, and then the cardiologist again in a month.

Gus is our little miracle kid, the Drs are amazed after getting all of his paperwork from Korea they can't believe what they are seeing when they meet Gus. Jason and I are not so surprised, God has been so faithful and the power of prayer is unbelievable. We knew this kid had a special connection with God! Thank you to all of you for your prayers, God has heard you and has faithfully provided for Gus.

Our healthy little boy is a prayer come true, who believes in dreams anymore when you serve a God like we do. We will try to keep this more up to date.

Gus is getting baptised on January 24 at Providence at the 11:00 service, we can't wait to thank God publicly for our little miracle.

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!