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OUR
ADOPTION
JOURNEY
On
the 3rd of July 2003 as a family we began the journey to
adopt a precious baby from Korea
The journey so far has not been totally easy with a lot
of Government procedures to follow but we do consider it
to have been an enjoyable one..... Until now :)
3rd of July marked our first official information
session, the session that must be attended before any
other steps can be taken. This session gave a
brief overview of overseas adoption but was not country
specific. Although we had already made the choice
of Korea before this day. We have quite a few
friends who have adopted from Korea so the choice was
very easy!
The journey has begun!
Our next step was to have our medicals and send all our
information to the Department.
After this was a short wait for the allocation of a
Social Worker so we could begin the 'hard' work of the
home study. This was a process which looked at
every bit of our lives, personalities and background.
Our first meeting also provided our first laugh and
showed our Social Worker how keen Patrick is to be a
brother.
For some reason he decided to tell our social worker
about the 'No Girls Allowed' sign on his bedroom door!!
I was standing back where he couldn't see me so he could
talk to her so he didn't see my look of dismay!
Anyway the social worker says to him 'Oh so you wouldn't
like a baby sister then' He looks at her like she
has just grown a second head and says 'I will take the
sign down when the BABY comes!'
Go
boy go is all I could think lol
We
had several more meetings with our case worker and had
to complete our own self assessment. Christmas
week 2003 everything was ready to send back to the
department. Our case worker held on to it all
until just after the new year hoping that our file would
arrive in the last lot of mail and not be buried by
other paperwork. It must have worked because by
mid January we had our local approval and were given the
next lot of tasks to complete for our file to head off
to Korea.
We
spent the next month gathering all the necessary
information and having photo's taken. We stressed
over the application to the adoption agency of Korea,
worried that we might answer the wrong way and slow
things up. Finally though we were happy with what
we had gathered and called our social worker and asked
her to come and collect everything.
She came and collected our very precious file and mailed
it off to the department. A week or so later I got
the very exciting call to say that our file was on its
way to Seoul, Korea.
A
few weeks later we received the courier's account which
showed that our file had arrived at Eastern Social
Welfare Society (where our baby will come from) on the
20th February 2004. It was the 2nd of 4 files to
arrive from our state for 2004.
It
was such a relief to know that everything we could do
was now done and we could just relax and wait for the
exciting call to come. We of course hoped for a
super fast allocation and after about 6 weeks began to
expect that phone call at any moment!
We
come to NOW ....... I guess of the whole process right
now we are not feeling the fun of it. Our file has
now been in Korea for 17 weeks (as of 18 June 2004) and
although it isn't unusual to still be waiting for an
allocation we had obviously hoped for faster news.
I am not sure who is the most impatient.... myself or
our 5 year old son Patrick. He is often asking
'can't we just go to Korea NOW' How I would like
to say yes!! Of course even after the phone call
comes we have to wait for Immigration to do their deed
and that takes 2-3 months!! We are sure though
that once we have our allocation we will be so busy
getting the nursery ready etc that the time will fly!
Hopefully very soon this page will be updated with the
best possible news and that will be an allocation
together with a photo of our precious bundle!
ALLOCATION!!!
MEET TAE JOON!
Well who would possibly have believed that we would be
updating this page just a short 4 days later!!!!
Yup you guessed it! We received 'that' call today
and became the proud parents of Tae Joon! He was
born 1st March 2004 and is now waiting in Korea for
Immigration to clear him and finalise his documents so
we can collect him! Below are some photo's of OUR
SON!
Below is a photo of him with his Foster Mother who is
taking good care of him now and will continue to do so
until we can get over there to collect him! We
thank her so much for being there for Tae Joon while we
can't be!
Hopefully the wait won't be too long now so we can leave
for Korea to pick Tae Joon up!
UPDATE
It
is now 1st of October and our precious Tae Joon is 7
months old today. How sad that he is still waiting
to join our family. Hopefully it won't be too much
longer now. We have used this time since
allocation to prepare our home and our family for his
arrival.
As
you can see below Patrick was delighted to help paint
Tae's bedroom in a gorgeous blue which he chose!
We
chose very special toys to welcome Tae home and his bed
is nicely made ready for his arrival. The blanket on
Tae's bed was lovingly created by his Nanny
Charlesworth! Didn't she do a GREAT job!
He
has fabulous trucks on his curtains!
Please keep checking back here for more updates!
Hopefully soon our flight details will be added and the
great news that we have met our little man!
Please use the button below to return to Patrick's page!
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