"Have you heard anything yet?"

"Have you heard anything yet?"

This is the most common phrase we've heard over the last few months. When I wrote our last blog update, I thought that we were within a month of getting the call to travel to Korea, but little did we know that everything wouldn't go as expected.

Since our baby shower, much has changed. First, Laura had her last day at work. When we received our referral for Zachary, we starting discussing how much longer Laura would remain at work. We knew that at some point we would receive our travel call and would have to quickly drop everything to travel to Korea. Knowing that Laura wouldn't have enough time to give her two week notice after our travel call, she decided that she would decide on her final day of work in advance so that we would be able to travel as quickly as possible once we received our travel call. She had her last day of work on April 10th. It was a difficult time for her because she loved her job very much, but knowing that we would soon be united with our son helped reduce the pain of her loss.

Shortly after Laura had her last day of work, we had to deal with our second loss...we had to say good-bye to our precious cat Critter. At almost 21 years old, Critter had a great life and brought us immense joy and happiness. Two years earlier we said good-bye to our other cat, Gizmo (nearly 19 years old). We never thought that Critter would survive her by 2 years. We were thankful for each additional day we had with her, but still miss her and her sister very much.

Critter

Gizmo

After a tough month of two losses and continued adoption delays, it became more and more difficult to hear the words..."Have you heard anything yet?". We knew that people were asking us this question because they loved us and wanted more than anything for us to be with our son. Even though it wasn't always easy to hear those words, we knew that we had the love and support of all our friends and family that would help carry us through.

Despite our losses and setbacks, we continued to remain positive and decided to start our "mini adoption journey" as we waited for news about Zachary. We knew that at some point we would want to have pets again, but we originally thought that we would wait until Zachary was home before adopting a pet. As the days went by, we knew something was missing from our empty home. There was no way we could replace Critter and Gizmo, but there was room in our hearts for other pets. We slowly started looking for a new addition to our family. After searching, we decided that we wanted to adopt a sibling pair. We found two beautiful female cats. Here are the newest additions to our family (Zachary's furry little sisters).

Maggie

Sophie

Though much had changed over the past two months, one item had remained the same..."we haven't heard anything yet". But finally that changed today. After a wait that was longer than expected, we finally received some great news. Today we were notified by our social worker that the Emigration Permit (EP) has been completed for Zachary. I won't go into details about the EP, but basically it means that he is very close to receiving approval from the Korean government to travel. Our social worker told us that we can expect to travel in 2-4 weeks.

After many months of hearing the words "Have you heard anything yet?", we're finally able to say "yes". We know that there are only a few weeks separating us from our son. The first part of our adoption journey is almost at an end. Before we know it, we'll be meeting our son for the first time, holding him in our arms, and bringing him home.

After that, the parenting journey begins. We can't wait!!!