It's Official!

We are a bonafide family. Today we had our court hearing to finalize our adoption. Not that we really needed a judge to tell us that we are now Micah's parents; he has been our little boy since the first time that we read about him in an email back in February 2009. But it's nice to know that its an official done deal. In some ways it felt to me like it was graduation day, I'm not sure why, maybe because we finally graduated from paperwork and fees... forever!!! yeah!!!

We don't have many pictures from today because you can't take pictures in the juvenile courtroom waiting area. Kim told Micah this better be the last time we are in the juvee courtroom with him. My mom took a picture in the courtroom, (with the judge's permission :) but I don't have it yet so I'll insert it later.

This picture has nothing to do with today, it was taken at church last Sunday, just felt like throwing in a nice picture of the family since I don't have any from today.

My parents and Kim's parents were both here and we went to Sparky's Cafe for breakfast after the court hearing. Sparky's is one of our favorite breakfast places and it is right by the courthouse.

Here's Micah and Elmo waiting for their food.

I kept thinking about this verse today: Romans 8:38 "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, nor things present nor things to come, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else that is in all creation can separate from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

You're ours forever kiddo.

Raid On Bethlehem

Is there anything as precious as watching a young child play with the manger scene?
ummm yah.

He Came...



He Saw..

He Conquered.

ahhh, warms a mother's heart.

Check out our Christmas Video!

Click on the link, and then click the play button...

http://lps.myfacelol.com/v101/default.aspx?m=movies/holiday/Santa.swf&b=http://www.myfacelol.com/assets/&df1=userimg/158/4b871fcf-3bb6-4e00-86e9-21e84ff5a502-2306548.png&df2=userimg/158/4b871fcf-3bb6-4e00-86e9-21e84ff5a502-2306262.png&df3=userimg/158/4b871fcf-3bb6-4e00-86e9-21e84ff5a502-2306037.png&df4=userimg/158/4b871fcf-3bb6-4e00-86e9-21e84ff5a502-2305749.png

Happy Thanksgiving

We had a nice Thanksgiving with Kim's family on Thursday and my family on Friday.

Micah loved playing with all the kids. This is his cousin, Sam who is 12 days older than Micah.

On Saturday we went to a Christmas tree farm near my parents house and saw real reindeer,

adorable snowmen, ...

and the real Santa Claus. I can't fault my kid for being afraid to sit on this guy's lap, but didn't

quite get the picture I was hoping for :)

He's Walking

This post is about a month overdue, but Micah has starting walking. It happened so gradually, it's hard to say when he started, he just added one more step to his longest run the day before and eventually he was walking. I decided to put a video in late anyway, just because it's fun for me to look back and see how much he's changed. It's only been a month and I can hardly remember what it was like when he was just crawling. A lot of people told me to be glad that he wasn't walking yet because he would be in to everything, but I wouldn't really say he's busier now, he was already a crazy speed crawler and into everything, but he definitely falls a lot more, on the flip side though, we're saving a lot of wear and tear on jeans!

did you catch the nice save so his head doesn't hit the cement? I flinch every time!

Weekend With Friends

A couple weekends ago we went up to Moorhead to visit our friends the Olsons. It was a fun and relaxing trip, no agenda, just hanging out, it was great. Their 3 year old, Lily, kept Micah very entertained, which was awesome.

It was a long drive, so we did a few things to break it up...

switched drivers...

We stopped at a grocery store somewhere between Alexandria and Moorhead. I think small towns are the only place to still find horse rides at the stores, and it was a penny!

Lily wanted to dress up and have Micah be Tinkerbell. I love their faces, seriously, a picture is worth a thousand words...

This one is courtesy of Emily... :)

Happy Halloween

I had to work this weekend on Halloween so Micah and Kim came to the hospital to hand out candy to the nurses, unfortunately Micah isn't as good at handing out candy as he is holding it with a death grip until it's melted beyond recognition.

Here's our little Elmo...

It was so funny when he looked down and you just saw the Elmo face.

Kim and Micah stopped at a few friends' houses after the hospital. Thanks Steph for these great pictures!

A Muppet and a Peep

Happy Birthday Kim!!

Kim, I have to give the fans what they want.. :) so here is an adorable baby picture of you. Never in a million years would I have thought that my family would be the 2 cutest Korean boys in the whole world. I'm so lucky. Love ya! I hope you have a great birthday!

Rah Rah Rah for Ski-U-Mah

So it's Friday night and Kim and I are itching to do something, but where do you take a 1 year old? Answer: A Gopher Volleyball game. Who knew? It was great; or, at least I can say we had a blast watching Micah love it. Kim was looking for Gopher Hockey tickets online, but we figured Micah would probably not sit very well through a hockey game, especially in assigned seats, so somehow we ended up at a volleyball game. We've never been to one, and I'm pretty sure neither one of us can name a player or a coach present or past, but it was fun. $8 for general admission, unless you are wearing gold then it's $4. Jackpot, as you'll see in the pictures below. :) General Admission is any of the bench seating, which works out great with a kid and there was plenty of seats; not exactly a sold old event.

He loved the band and likes to clap when the crowd cheers, and of course his favorite... "ball ball ball"

Micah. Look at daddy Micah. Micah. whatever.

GOLDY! Micah is trying to spin around to see him better.

After the picture, Goldy went down a stairwell near us and Micah kept watching for him to come back up. So disappointing when just regular people kept coming up the stairwell.

I'm not saying we're going to become season ticket holders or anything, but it was a lot of fun, and Saturday 10/24 you can get in for $1!

Carving our Pumpkins

How do you know you don't like it unless you try it.


our pumpkin family

Picking out Pumpkins

Yesterday we went to Eveland Family Farm in Andover. We had a great time. They had a hayrides and all kinds of animals like llamas, sheep, miniature donkeys, peacocks, and, of course, millions of pumpkins. I loved that they even had little red wagons to carry your pumpkins.



My daredevil son.


Micah was yelling "moo moo" then I started taking video and he wouldn't say a thing. Just take my word for it, it was adorable :)




Don't stare at this one too long, it may be coming in the form of a Christmas letter soon :)



"ball" "ball" "ball" "ball"



Leaving to go home..Ahh.. so content.

This is the video I tried to put on the bottom of the last blog, but it didn't work. Sorry about the dark lighting, but you'll get the jist. He's sitting in his toybox.

What we've been up to...

I'll catch you up on what we've been up to during my blogging hiatus. I started back to work the end of September, ***sigh***, back to reality. It was way too easy to get use to my 12 weeks off. Micah also started going to daycare 2 days a week. I am still working 12 hour nights, so it is just while I sleep during the day, usually 9:30-3pm. Daycare has been much harder on me than Micah. He loves it. (she has better toys :) It is a lady about my age with 2 little kids in elementary school. She takes care of another girl partime that is the daughter of a nurse I work with. Her daughter is a week younger than Micah.

Here's some pictures of what we've been up to.. (my sister told me to not do any more posts without pictures)

One of his favorite toys... clothes pins.

This is one of my favorite pictures. Sentimental mom.

I wouldn't really say he's "walking" yet. So if you guessed Christmas, you may be right. His longest run is about 6 steps which he's done a few times, but I wouldn't really say he's walking since he still would much rather crawl, especially when he's in a hurry. He is starting to talk a lot. It's so fun. Pretty much every word starts with the letter B. He loves Elmo which is "bamo" His favorite word is "ball" and loves to watch football with Kim. It's amazing how much he's changed in 3 months! He also does the motions for a couple of the songs he sings in Sunday School, so fun.

I tired to put a video on, but it didn't work so I'll try again later.

My Bright Idea

So I had this genious idea that it would be so neat to make handprints and footprints of Micah while he is still little. I mean, I could already picture the lovely picture frame with my angelic child and his cute little hand prints neatly displayed underneath. Ahhh precious. So being the wise mom that I am I planned to do it right before his bath this morning. I don't claim to be crafty or anything, but how hard could it be? I took him down to the basement to get my ink pad. I used to do some stamping to make cards so I figured the ink was probably still good. I found my black ink pad and saw there was a smudge on my knuckle; that's weird, the lid must have had some ink on it. Then I saw that I had ink on my fingertip as well. Still, no problem, I'll just carry Micah with my finger extended so I don't get ink anywhere else. Then I see he has ink on the back of his pajamas. Seriously! Where is this coming from! Now I have it on my other hand and my forearm. It is like a quickly spreading black plague. At this point I still haven't lost sight of my goal. I'll just get upstairs, get my hands clean and then get his pajamas off so we can get this over with and get him in the tub. Micah starts getting fussy because he's naked and wants to get in the tub because he likes to sit in it while it's filling. I put his hand on the ink pad and then he wants my glasses. I don't wear my glasses very much so he is especially intrigued. One hand down. Awesome. And it doesn't look too bad. Now I am holding him and his dirty hand with one arm and trying to ink the clean hand and press it on the paper and spread his fingers with my other hand. Oh well, at least one of the hands turned out ok. How cute would it be to get his feet too right? So now I'm holding his two dirty hands together like a permanent prayer position and get both feet done. Then Chloe walks in and steps on the handprint picture. Stupid dog. One of the fingers smears a little and now my dog has ink on her paw. Not to worry, it blotted itself out after about 3 steps on the bathroom floor. Now Micah is in the tub and I'm scrubbing his hands and feet. Seriously. Do babies have skin that stains more easily than adults? There are purple hand prints and drips on the side of the tub and purple foot prints on the bottom of the tub, and the phone is ringing. I still need to put hairspray on fuzzy pajamas that he's only worn twice so the ink doesn't set in.
I put Micah down for a nap with his stained hands and feet; and turns out toilet bowel cleaner works pretty well to get ink stains off your tub, and no I didn't try it on my kid. No need at this point to call me with great suggestions like using washable marker or finger paints or just have the kid put his hands in some playdough and let it dry. I had plenty of time to ponder all that while I scrubbed. Oh by the way, I had stored the ink pad on it's side and all the ink had pooled into the corner of the case, so the lid was the culprit. I decided to just run the lid under the faucet to stop the insanity. It sprayed on the the backsplash behind the faucet. Seriously. I do have a four year degree. It was like when you put a spoon under running water and it can spray 5 feet. The ink stained the paint, but it isn't too bad. I checked to see who called in the middle of all this. Kim. I called him back.
Kim: hey what are you doing?
Me: Cleaning the bathroom. I was trying to make hand prints of Micah.
Kim: Why did you think that would be a good idea?
nice.
Oh well, at least I have bad smudgy pictures to hang on my wall.

My Birthday

On Thursday I had a really nice birthday with Kim and Micah. We thought about going to the State Fair, but Micah doesn't sit in his stroller very well, so it didn't sound like a fun time this year. We went to Como Park and went throught the butterfly garden. My friend Shannon and I had brought Micah to the zoo awhile ago and he really liked the butterflies.

Then we went to the park and had a picnic of Chipotle, my favorite picnic food.

My boys.

Micah had the best time finding pine cones.

Then we went to Izzy's Ice Cream Shop. We had seen it on a TV show "On the Road with Jason Davis" and I have wanted to go ever since. It was so good. I recommend "Coffee Break" and "Salty Caramel" yum.

Micah LOVES ice cream.