Holiday joy sent to you by Shutterfly.com

Shutterfly is offering an opportunity for bloggers to receive 50 FREE holiday cards if they blog about all of their fabulous options! 

I have scoured their holiday selection and needless to say whether you are looking for a Photo Christmas card http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-photo-cards

A calendar option for family to enjoy pictures your little cuties all year long http://www.shutterfly.com/calendars

Or a fun way to invite friends and family celebrate a big birthday http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/birthday-invitations

Shutterfly has something for everyone.

While I won't reveal what I have selected.  You can be sure that it will have cute picture of Max on it! You will just have to wait and see if you are lucky enough to be on my Christmas card list!

Here are a few that caught my eye.


Our entire home is done in these colors...it fits us!

Kind of like a big present being sent to everyone!

I love a candy cane stripe!

What a great Early Christmas Present for me! This is a wonderful opportunity to share the gifts we have been given, and to show off our new little cutie, while he won't be home in time for Christmas, Shutterfly.com is helping to share our joy with our new little goy, so you can all enjoy him too.  Happy Holidays everyone, And Thank you shutterfly!

Check out all they have to offer at Shutterfly.com!

All sunshine and LOTS of Showers...

It's not a weather report...Two weeks ago we were very lucky to have several people throw us Baby Showers!  We had two in just a few days.

The First:

Mark's Co-workers threw us a shower on Monday 11-8 during our lunch break.  We only work a few minutes from each other, I was invited to join everyone for the shower and they served lunch and had a beautiful cake.  We were blessed with many gifts from some individuals and some gifts from the group.

Here are some pictures from the shower and the gifts we received.  Everyone was very generous and we are very thankful for their kindness.

The Second Shower:   My Mom and Sisters threw me a Shower on Saturday 11-13. 

It was a lot of family and several of my friends as well.  We had an early dinner, were definitely showered with many wonderful gifts and some very tasty cake! We do typically not play games at showers, we are more of a chatting and drinking wine kind of group.  I did have one request...we passed out blank world maps and itty bitty pictures of Max.  It was a one question game "Where in the world is Max?"  Everyone had to put his picture where they thought he was.  Everyone seemed to know he was in South Korea, and most everyone got the continent right.  My niece Megan went around and showed everyone where it was!  She had done her homework and had a bit of an advantage;)

Part of the decorations were little Korean Flags.  I had to get a picture with both the South Korean and American Flags.

Here are some pictures from the Shower as well.  We got gifts from near and far.  I even got a surprise package from another AP in waiting Amy!  Thank you, Amy.  When I explained how I knew her, from meeting online, no one seemed to follow, so I said it is kind of like online dating for adoptive moms!

We were very blessed by the generousity of both of these groups and are very thankful we have them in our lives!  Thank you everyone for the wonderful things for Max! We cannot wait until he is able to use everything!

Legals!

We found out yesterday that our legals arrived in Wisconsin on Friday November 12th.  The state will send the legals and a letter to the Federal government and we will start the steps to be able to bring home Max.  The US side is officially underway! 

Care Package sent to Max.

On Friday we mailed our care package to Max.  When I went to the post office to get the box to send it in the lady kept telling me they did NOT ship to Korea, Period.  We went several rounds of...this is going to South Korea, NOT North Korea.  She still did not believe me and kept looking in their database...I of course did not have the address with me, I was just picking up the box.  Then she found something in he database that said we could mail drop it to the country.  Which means to put it in a big bag with a bunch of other peoples packages and they throw it out of a plane.  This option was going to cost several hundred dollars.  Ummmm, no, we would not be doing this.  The she found 2 different Korea entries, but it did not differentiate North or South, she kept interchanging Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North) and Republic of Korea (South) and telling me we could send it to the North but not South and asked if I wanted to do that instead, Huh...no I don't want to send it to North Korea.  Finally, I told her I would check the website when I got home and if it says I can send it to South Korea, I would come back with the address.  Well just in case you were wondering...we can ship a package to South Korea!  Thank goodness, because we had some cute things to send to Max!

We sent some outfits, PJ's, a blanket, toy, mittens, pictures, a book with our voices reading it and a baby toothbrush (kind of a teether with a toothbrush on the end)  since he has 2 teeth at 7 months! We also sent some candy corn and kitchen towels for the foster family.

The mittens we sent, I actually made them!  I did not knit them, I sewed them.  One of the first things I actually completed with my developing sewing skills.  I actually made them from some fleece I had bought for another project and used one of Mark's old shirts for the fabric for the cuffs!

They are not perfect, but they were made with love for my Son! Not bad for a beginner.

The package should make it there in 5 to 10 business days and he should get it when he goes in the last week of November for his monthly well baby check.  Many times adoptive parents get new photos of their children with the contents of the care package, sometimes they are photographed with their foster mothers.  This would be a precious picture to have.  If we get new picture we will share them with everyone.