First Care Package!

I am so excited! We are sending our first care package to Emerson via an adoptive parent I recently befriended. Claudia is going to take our care package for us since she's leaving for Korea this weekend to bring home her son. Now THAT's exciting! I know our travel call is still a long ways from now, so for now I am ecstatic just to be able to send Emerson something from us!

I ran around like a mad woman putting together our package. Originally I thought we'd have until June to send one, since that's what we were told by our case manager. But traveling families are also able to take one for you since they'll be dropping by the agency in Korea.

So here's the thing.. our care package has to fit in a one gallon ziplock bag. Newsflash: those bags are fine and dandy to marinade meat or store leftovers, but are pretty dang tiny to fit a care package!

Here's everything I bought:

The vitamins and coffee are for foster mom, for those of you who are thinking "What in the world", lol. I shoved everything into the bag but closing it proved rather difficult. Trying to zip lock that bag reminded me of trying to squeeze into size 24 jeans. It just wasn't going to happen. I had to pick and choose and ended up taking out a couple things.

I knew I had to keep "the Sophie" even though squeezing her in was quite a feat. It seems everyone and their mothers (well, especially mothers) know of Sophie. From the sounds of it, this giraffe toy is THE favorite among babies. They love the squeaky sounds it makes and love gnawing on Sophie.

Another must was a baby's first album filled with pics of us, and one of Jagger. Now little Emerson will know what we look like! :)

Here's the final bag, closed and all:

Not bad, eh? I have to say I'm pretty proud of myself. That bag is STUFFED. Lying flat on the table, it rises about 4, maybe 5, inches off the table. I hope Claudia has the room in her suitcase for it! It's pretty heavy with everything folded and condensed in there. I'm seeing her tonight so I'll see what she says. It's just so nice of her to take anything for us during this majorly exciting time for her, that I don't want to hand over this big old ziplock bag and cause her any inconvenience.

Anyhow, here's what ended up not making the cut - four pairs of socks and an uber cute dress for the spring season.

I figure Korea's still a bit chilly right now so I'll send it in June. The socks are 12 to 24 months so I can send them in the future or take them with me when we go to Korea.

So happy our baby girl is going to receive this care package!! More than the things we're able to send, I wish there were a way we could bottle up our love for her and send it. But for now, this overstuffed one gallon ziplock bag will have to do. There wouldn't be a big enough ziplock bag that could handle the love we want to send to her!