Presenting: Kim Mee Zimmer

Today, Wednesday September 19th, 2007 -- we received a much awaited call from our adoption agency: they made a match!

At 4pm today, they sent over her information and pictures and it was love at first sight. There she was: Kim Zimmer, waiting to be adopted by her American parents!

We are so excited. I know that this home addition commanded most of our time this summer, but the real reason we needed the space was for the additional child we wanted to add to our family. Now with the addition nearly complete, we can turn our full attention to bringing our little girl home.

So Mee Bae was born April 7th, 2007 to an unwed mother and father (21 yrs old). Knowing that they could not raise this child, they gave her up for adoption. She has been living with a foster family since her birth and is very, very attached to her foster mom (sigh).

She is a healthy and alert 5 month old, and as soon as we sign the paper work and send in our check, the legal red tape will begin being cut and we will become her foster parents with finalization following about 6 months later. Thus, sometime shortly into the new year we will be making a trip to Korea to bring back our daughter!

The kids are already in love with her and are very, very happy to add her to our family unit.

Her name is "So" = "bright" and "Mee" = "beautiful" and "Bae" = her family name.

We have always referred to our unknown daughter as Kim, or "Kimmi", knowing that we would change her name to this once we adopted her. Kathy calls our kids "miss beautiful" and "mr. handsome", so it's befitting that So Mee means "bright and beautiful". Note that by incorporating her Korean name "Mee" (beautiful), it yields: Kim Mee Zimmer, or Kimmi Zimmer! Pretty cool!!

We are very excited to bring her home and appreciate all of your thoughts, prayers, and encouragement as we snowball through the next four months. It takes a village to raise a child!

Can't wait for each and everyone of you to meet our new daughter! Please, please post a message for us here, all of us will be checking this posting and sharing it with others. If you just leave a message as "anonymous" you don't need to create an account, and we'd love to see your responses!

Your friends, the Zimmers: party of five!

UPDATE: Kim (So Mee) was born in Seosan City, South Korea (pop. 150,000). Here is link to her hometown: http://eng.seosantour.net/default.asp?go=40

Seosan City (or Sosan) is located about 60 miles to the south and west of Seoul, South Korea. And about 6,230 miles from her soon-to-be home in Aurora, CO. (thx Google Earth!)

OUCH!!!!!!!!!!

Ever wonder what a 33-year old architect does on his weekends? Well, it varies. This weekend I got into a bar fight, decided to shave my head, and create a 2" gash in my melon!

Let me explain...




It's actually kind of embarrassing, but I'm not one to be shy. So Friday night I walked into the bathroom and dropped something on the floor, bent over to pick it up, and jerked my head up right into the towel bar. OUCH! Now according to the photos you might think that the towel bar won, but I got to tell you -- I knocked it down with one punch and it did NOT get back up!

So immediately after gouging my melon, I put my hand over the wound. I could feel the liquid oozing thru my palm. I took a brief glance, saw a LOT of blood, and shouted for Kathy -- who was already enjoying her 3rd stage of sleep on the couch. She came running, saw my head, SCREAMED, and ran for a towel. Jade, who was still awake, came sauntering into the bathroom, thinking I was "just faking". At the first sight of blood, she tucked tail and ran! Kathy returned with a towel about 30-seconds later, then had to sit down, then had to lie down. I sat there applying pressure to my scalp, weighing whether-or-not to make the trip to ER.

The thing with head wounds (this is my second): they don't just bleed, the blood sack below your scalp explodes! So there's a lot of blood, initially -- and then it stops.

I phoned Jeff, my buddy across the street who is an EMT and asked him to look at it. I went over to his hosue, we cleaned up the wound and decided not to do stitches, but that a butterfly bandage would suffice. Shaved my head a bit more to make room for the bandages (unfortunately I cannot blame the receding hairline on the wound, rather my ancestors!) Jeff gave it some tenderly EMT lovin' and taped me up. I just removed the bandages this afternoon in time for our final 'Sweat Equity' taping.

What a weekend ride! I wore a hat to church last night because I had a big 'ol bandage covering up the wound....didn't want to field a barrage of questions. Anyone who caught me without the hat definitely gave me second and third looks!

The wound has healed up well. It was more of a gouge than a slice, which is why stitches would not have really helped. Now I just got to let it heal and let my hair grow back!

If you look closely to the new 2" gash you can see the old wound just above it (6 stitches). It looks like when I go to complete the trifecta I should aim for another horiz. wound to complete the "Z". Can you see it? The top scar that is healed combined with the new scar create 2/3's of a capital letter "Z". Almost there.....I'll be like the Zimmer Family Harry Potter: the Boy with the Scar!

So that's how we started the weekend!

We finished the weekend by completing most of our punch list: touch-up paint, adding window hardware, clean-up, closet touches, etc... Now we have just a few little items left to complete the addition. Trim, some hardware, base board. But we're getting there! It's exciting, and we receive high complements from everyone that visits. It's good to be close to the finish line.

I'll have my buddy who is a photographer swing by and snap some better, more prof. shots and get the finals posted up here. Keep checking for the final blog....