New Year's Eve

There aren't many folks who will invite you over when there are 11 of you, but we have some special friends who have the gift of hospitality, for sure, the Lyons. It was so nice to spend some quality time with them on New Year's Eve.

Arrival Day for Winter Kids

We had 3 very likable boys join us today for their winter break. Getting them from the airport customs / security folks took the longest ever--6 hours. It is a tale too adventurous to tell, unless you have a couple of hours to hear it. Anyway, after much prayer, God opened the door for them to come. Welcome Hoyeon (Daniel's brother), Seyeong, and Youngjun! We're so glad you are here!

Hyunshik Arrives

Our nephew Hyunshik, who is 16 came to stay several weeks in Atlanta, but we did a funny thing. Right after leaving the airport, instead of taking him to our house, we took him to stay with our friends the Vermilya's. Years ago, when his older brother was only 10, he stayed with the same family for 3 weeks. So this will be a fun experience for him.

After being with the Vermilya's for 3 days, I got an e-mail from Mrs. Vermilya. Here is most of it. You can hear in her voice how much fun they are having. I think it is great for a group of home schooled kids to have this kind of opportunity to interact with an international student their age.

We are having a great time with Hyunshik. He has been to youth group, church, A tour of Bethlehem (and petted his first sheep ever), having advent everynight and has helped with making Christmas cookies. He told me tonight that Christmas is a very exciting time! We have 4 parties in the next 3 days. I think he likes the excitement. His English has been improving everyday. Thank you for bringing him to us for a short while. The kids are taking a real liking to him. He is also helping take care of dogs up the street and is a real help around the house.

Denise

Naomi's New Bed

It seems like it was yesterday that Naomi was standing up for the first time in her crib. Now look. She has graduated to her first toddler bed. It is one that uses the same mattress from the baby bed. Now if we can just keep her from falling out of it!

Photography - The Novice vs. the Pro

My old Fuji Finepix Z20 was taking too many photos that weren't sharp--particularly in low light. Perhaps the flash on it is getting old or slower, or maybe it was dropped one time too many. Anyway, I broke down and got a new one, a Z30 this time. It was quite cheap as cameras go--$79!

It has a new feature that lets you automatically take consecutive shots so you can get good individual and group shots. You press the timed shutter and the camera searches for a face(s) and focuses on a still face and then takes a photo, and waits a couple of seconds and does it again and again. This way you can easily get a good shot and instead of looking at the camera, you can look at the subject and make suggestions, or you can go and get in the photo without rushing. This is a cool feature!

We put this feature to use when we heard from Korea that Julie needed a portrait for her yearbook there. Here are our trials and errors as we strove to get a good portrait.

The word was, the shot had to be from the knees up, so here was our first shot. Later, I made the background solid with Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Then, we tried again after having her change clothes and lose the glasses.

Then we thought, "Oops! She's probably supposed to be sitting down." So here's the next shot.

The background is a down blanket.

This is the same photo with an edited background.

Here is another outfit with a different background.

The strange thing is, the photographer over there, who said he could manipulate any photo we sent, said none of these we sent would do. He insisted we get a "professional" to take a picture, so it would be "bright enough".

This is the professionally take photograph. What do you think? Do you like it better than mine or mine better than this one?

Just for Fun - Mystery Photo Revealed

Mystery Photo Revealed! It was our dog, Suzie! Like all dogs, she loves to go for a ride.

Just for Fun - Mystery Photo

I think this will be easy for some of you. Can you guess what it is?

I'll post the answer tomorrow.

Christmas Symphony

A lot of people don't know this, but every year the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra has a free Christmas concert at the North Avenue Presbyterian Church. It's an awesome concert and it is their way of saying thanks for Atlanta's support. Our friends the Lyons are long-term members there, so we usually see them whenever we attend their church.

I have had the privilege of attending the concert a couple of times. It is quite fun and moving. It is such a good cultural event, that it is well worth pulling kids out of school to attend, but I wouldn't recommend taking any small children that might have trouble sitting still or being quiet for an hour.

Plan A was for us to take Hannah and Naomi to a sitter and to attend the concert, but due to very bad weather and slow traffic, we switched to Plan B. So Duk-Sun and all the big kids attended the concert, while Hannah, Naomi and I did a short downtown tour. Afterwards, we rejoined them and had lunch at the famous Varsity restaurant.

Oh, I only had my cell phone, so these photos aren't the best quality. Still they capture the moments, I think.

Just before the concert

Downtown Atlanta can be fun even in the rain. That's because there is a maze of food courts, passageways, and bridges that connect the buildings to each other, so you can get around and still stay dry. Here we found a big Christmas tree for the girls to run around.

The most amazing thing I've found downtown is the Marriott Marquis building. Inside, it looks like you're in the body of a fish. The "spine" has two glass express elevators that zoom you from the bottom to the top of the building (47 floors up) in seconds. I wasn't sure how Naomi would react to this since she has always been afraid of elevators. She will cry or at least whimper while riding in them. But this time it was different. There was complete silence as we rode the "magic carpet" up, up, up. And when we came to rest at the top, she smiled from ear to ear and said, "Funny!" (She means fun, of course.)

Naomi still talks about lying on a couch at the lobby level and looking up. As you can see, she was thrilled.

Here we are at the Varsity.

Thanksgiving, 2009

Most of my extended family got together for Thanksgiving at my dad's house. Three of my sisters are not in the photos. Pam was there, but she was running around serving food and somehow escaped being captured by my camera. Susan and Crystal both live about a day's drive away in opposite directions, and couldn't get away this time. It was a nice time. The food was delicious, and the weather was good enough to allow a walk around the circle to burn a few of those many calories we ate.

There were some new people to meet, this Thanksgiving. My brother Donny has a new wife. My niece Nicole has started a new family. And my sister Cindy and her son, my nephew Chris, who was adopted twenty-something years ago, has recently met up with his birth mom and her family. They stopped by on their way back home to Florida from Atlanta, so we got to meet them. They are very nice. They are all getting along just fine.

Naomi's Birthday

Today Naomi (Summer) turned 2. We went to the mall and had photos taken, and she rode the train there. Then we came home and she had supper, a bath, had cake and opened a few presents. She got stickers, a balloon, bubbles, and a game.

She seemed to thoroughly enjoy the day. See for yourself.

Super H-Mart Grand Opening

Super H Mart is a Korean-owned grocery store chain that is more like a farmer's market. Their fresh fruits and vegetables are hard to beat.

Today we killed 2 birds with one stone and combined a meeting with Summer's case worker with a shopping trip. Mrs. Aleeza is much more than a case worker to us. She is like part of the family. She had been wanting to go to an Asian grocery store with us, and today she got the chance. Can you believe this shopping trip took the better part of the day?!? One reason was that we were in the longest and slowest checkout line I have ever been in. In fact, we were less than half way finished going through the store when we hit a traffic jam of shopping carts. We were shocked to find out that we were in the back of the checkout line. I knew we were in trouble when it took 10 minutes to move my cart one length. We had shopped for an hour and a half and then we waited that same amount of time holding our girls most of that time in the checkout line. We were exhausted! There were lots of good deals, but I'm not sure they were worth it. Here are the photos.

Leaf Gathering

Hannah and Mom enjoy some mother-daughter time together at the park nearby. After gathering leaves, they dipped them in candle making wax to preserve them and hung them up on threads.

An Example Speech

David and Daniel have an informative speech assignment coming up. After doing a quick search for a speech to use as an example, I found this one. Funny thing is I wasn't looking for any particular topic. I was just looking for an informative speech. But needless to say, I really liked this speech. David and Daniel have to do theirs on an influential or famous person. They chose Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison. Hopefully I can put their speeches on video for you to see, too.

At Horse Creek Ranch

We had a fun time once again at Horse Creek Ranch, which belongs to my sister and brother-in-law. We went for the weekend mainly to put together a new grill for them. Still, we had plenty of time to play around and relax. The interesting thing was that the mornings start out so cold and I needed my thick fleece jacket, but by the afternoon all I needed was a t-shirt to wear.

Welcome Back, Sulsers!

Our friends the Sulser's, Alan and Chonghwa moved back to Altanta this month. They moved away to North Carolina about 8 years ago. It's nice to have them back in the area. They are in the John's Creek area. They are a warm Christian family with a lot of wisdom between them. We appreciate their friendship.

I can't believe I didn't take a picture of their new house! Anyway, here are a few photos and a couple of videos of our time together.

Naomi is funny. When she gets tired, she doesn't get particularly whinny. She goes and goes and then stops without much of a fuss. I clipped this video short. It was actually about 5 minutes long.

Fall Festival Instead of Halloween

Culture truly is different from neighborhood to neighborhood. In our old neighborhood we would have over 200 trick-or-treaters visit our house on Halloween night. In the new neighborhood, the houses are more spread out, and there aren't as many kids. And...there's a nice church behind our house that sponsors an annual Fall Festival on Halloween night as an alternative to celebrating Halloween. Thanks to the church and their generosity, we saw not one trick-or-treater last year. This year we had one--that was because the church scheduled their fall festival earlier and that child's mom didn't know it, so the child got no candy.

Our younger kids got to go next door to the church and get candy and play a little, too. They dressed up for the fun of it. We are thankful for the people at the church next door for thinking of their neighbors. They make it very convenient to avoid following the crowds and celebrating a holiday that has increasingly become darker, more violent, and more occult.

Totally Dependent on God

Have you ever felt totally helpless? That's what we felt today as we drove and walked to the courthouse for Summer's TPR hearing. We had asked our friends and family to pray with us for God to soften Summer's birth-mom's heart--for her to do what was best for Summer and surrender her parental rights so we could make her a permanent member of our family.

Even though we were reasonably sure parental rights would eventually be taken from her birth-mom if she didn't give them up voluntarily, our hearts ached at the thought of the whole process being dragged out. If she had decided to fight us, there could have been months or years of Summer visiting her birth-mom and having her heart divided between two homes.

I am happy to announce that Summer's birth mom chose to voluntarily surrender her parental rights. She had already signed the papers when we got there! Praise the Lord!! It is God alone who grants us permission to raise children. No matter whose womb they develop in. He decides where they grow up. It is He who gives life and it is He alone who has the right to take it away. He softens and hardens hearts in order to accomplish His perfect will.

To some, Summer may have been an "accident", or she may have come along at an inconvenient time, but believe me, she was no accident. She was born in God's perfect timing. I find this interesting. The day on which Summer was born--that was the same day that we signed papers promising to adopt Hannah. Two weeks later we got a call asking if we would take custody of Summer. "Of course!," we said. God is never surprised. He had a plan for this little baby. We are so grateful. Lord willing, in only a few more months, Summer will be our forever daughter.

Thank you all for your prayers and your encouragement.

Julie's Birthday

Julie turned 12 on the 13th. This time we had a party with 3 families. She had a great time with everyone.

Trip to Euharlee

One Sunday afternoon we took a trip to Euharlee, GA. Euharlee is a tiny town with very little to see, but they do have a nice park, covered bridge and museum there. On the way there, you get to see a coal-fired power plant really close up, too!

David's Birthday

David turned 15 almost a month ago. Wow! Where does the time fly? Anyway, he wanted to keep it simple this year, so we didn't have a party. Duk-Sun served bulgogi which was really good. One thing I couldn't figure. David is so artistic and can draw really well, but on this day he seemed more interested in quantity than quality when he decorated his cake.

At English Oak Park

English Oak Park is a couple of blocks away from our old house. The city renovated the park, changing it from a flooded area with a muddy tennis court and a muddy basketball court, to this! This visit was done in late September.