An unexpected gift among the presents

Although it is not yet Thanksgiving the Christmas season is upon us. You can see it everywhere in stores, commercials and I have even seen a tree up in someones home! The holiday season brings alot of things and one of them is shopping for presents. If your like me, this is one of your favorite parts of the holidays, I LOVE to shop. Typically, I do not start quite this early but since we have to send Charlie his gift  and it can take a while to reach him, I have been out shopping for him. Not only did I need to find his Christmas gift but his birthday is in December as well.

It's hard to have to shop for your child's birthday when you have never met him, it's hard to shop for him because you will not be there when he opens his presents. It's hard to shop because we can't really send him anything too big and I feel bad that he is not getting a lot.  It's hard for my mind and heart to go there, to think about him having a birthday and not being with his true family to celebrate him. It's hard to think about Christmas and how in our family we focus on Jesus but this year he will be in a foster home that is Buddhist. It is so hard to have so many unknowns, we don't know how he is doing, we don't know if he received the package we sent him. So you get my point,  these are hard things to go through!

Yesterday a bit of the "hard" got a little easier. We received a phone call from our casework, she had recently been in Korea. She told me she got to meet Charlie ( insert large amounts of jealousy). She went on to tell me about my son and how he is doing. She told me he is a very happy baby and a very busy little boy. She told me that he loves the interactive photo album we sent him and plays with it all the time. His foster mother goes over our pictures with him everyday and he watches the DVD of Greyson and I reading him a book. She said she took some pictures of him for us and did a quick little write up of his height, weight and just some general things about him. Now that is better than any present I could find or get this season...That is a true GIFT!

It was so fun to hear about him and the pictures are in the mail and I can't wait to see them!!  This was very unexpected because we were told that we would only get one more update on him around his birthday. To get more pictures and some word on how he is was just wonderful.  She also told us our paperwork was going to be filed for EP by the end of next week. EP = exit permit, you can't get a court date without a permit to exit the country with your child. So another step is done and a new one begins. Unfortunately she said this next step was taking at times 2-4 months to process. That stinks but at least we have something specific to pray about. Please pray with us that our paperwork moves in a timely manner and that we get our son home soon!

I am trying to take pictures of everything to have as a record for Charlie of all the things that went into his process. I did take pictures of his presents. I bought him clothes as well as some little toys for both his birthday and Christmas. Right now everything that he wears does not belong to him, it's whatever the foster mom has. It makes me sad to think that besides what we send him, he has nothing of his own. So for now he has just a few things but rest assured when he gets home I will put my love of shopping to good use :). I attached the photos and I will end with giving God the Glory for the gift of His Son and for giving me the gift of mine.

Is 12:4 - "Give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done,and proclaim that His name is exalted. Sing to the Lord, for He has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world.

Birthday gift, we are told he loves the bath so we sent some

bath toys.

Christmas Gift, I always buy Greyson a "Christmas Sweater" and now Charlie will have one too. The stackable cups were a favorite toy when Greyson was little and it sounds like they are alike in many ways so I am hoping Charlie has fun playing with them as well.