A Simple Christmas

This year we've decided to keep it simple. It's been such a whirlwind ever since Thanksgiving. There was the month-long illness, the unexpected funeral of my uncle in South Dakota, our parents sharing in our Thanksgiving bird, my new job position requiring more work than before, the difficulty of waiting for a year for our beautiful daughter, the countless holiday concerts for Jay, his many voice and piano lessons besides the daily tasks of living. Thus, this year we decided less is better when it comes to things like decorating and sending out cards. This year we didn't bother putting up a tree and only sent out about 20 holiday cards. Even though we never took the trip to the cold storage shed to unpack our stuff for the holiday, our humble abode ended up looking downright Christmasy, thanks to our generous students and parents. I'll include some pictures here of the beautiful gifts of flowers, etc. that are all gifts. When you are teachers there is never the need to do any holiday baking. Why, we must have at least three large milk chocolate bars frozen in our freezer, already. Thanks to the many kind and generous families who entrust your kids to us each and every week day! We can't wait to share all of your kind gifts with Penny when she's here next year.
One of the special things about this season, of course, is all the music. It was a joy to get to help out with the music for our little Japanese Christian church that meets here in Fort Collins. I played my flute and Jay sang a solo. And we especially enjoyed hearing Jay sing, again, this year at the Messiah Sing Along, held annually as a fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity through Redeemer Lutheran Church. I'll try to insert videos of Jay singing below.
This year it was a white Christmas. And we got about another six inches of the white stuff the following Thursday, as well. So, it's definitely looking a lot like Christmas. . We had a very nice time on Christmas day spending time with Jay's parents. It's especially nice only having to drive to the other side of town to be with family. We're thankful for all of the gifts of family, friends and kids that brighten our days.

Refreshed and Recharged and Resuscitated!

Aaaah! We had a great weekend away with family. We met up with Jay's parents, his sister (Doreen) and brother-in-law (Rick), niece and Rick's mom. We stayed overnight Friday and Saturday nights in Canon City. On Saturday we got to ride the Rio Grande train through the Royal Gorge. This was all a Christmas gift from Jay's parents. Although we drove down in snow on Friday. Saturday turned out to be a nice and sunny day. We were celebrating Jay's parents' 52nd anniversary and Rick & Doreen's 25th. It was also fun to drive through the Garden of the Gods Park in Colorado Springs on our way back.It was really good to get away from school. I actually felt much more re-energized and ready to face the rowdy preschoolers this morning. The excitement of today was when I missed the fish bowl when I was putting Muzzy back after changing his water. He was flopping around helplessly on the carpet. I quickly grabbed him by the tail and threw him back in the water. Unfortunately, a few of the kids weren't napping at the time and saw what happened. But, they all thought it was quite funny. So, when they started getting up while I was away they were laughing about how Chandra made the fish bounce. And they were trying to demonstrate Muzzy's shaking. Ah, kids! I leave you with some pictures from the weekend.

More Exciting News!

We were told that Penny did receive our package. Unfortunately, the orphanage director could not tell our adoption coordinator what her reaction was, as she wasn't there. So, we hope to hear via a social worker to the director to our adoption coordinator. Kind of like the game "telephone". We just hope that no one changes the message somewhere down the line. I'm really curious now as to whether or not the social worker translated our letter, introducing ourselves for the first time to Penny. And did she translate it correctly? What is going on in Penny's mind right now? Ahh..I wish I could've been a mouse in the room at the time. Then again, we don't hope for mice to be present at the orphanage. Rather, I wish I could have been there in person. But, then I'm trying to jump ahead. My, this waiting game isn't easy. It's kind of frustrating to think that friends having biological children could've already had two in the time it's taking us to get our almost teenager.

Now for the other happy news. Right now our new friend from Pennsylvania is getting her own preteen daughter from the same orphanage. Her daughter is just a few months older than Penny. She's going to ask if they can meet with Penny in hopes to connect so that the girls can stay in touch even after they are both adopted and move to the U.S. We hope that the social workers will go along with this. I can't wait to hear about how her day went meeting her daughter for the first time and hopefully meeting ours, too!

The latest update on Adoption News

There is some exciting news besides the news that our wait will be even longer than we had originally hoped. I'm sure that many of you adoptive parents have been through this. Yes, we are now being told to expect that we probably won't travel at least until late Spring to early summer. Maybe we'll help Penny celebrate her 13th birthday in Thailand. Her birthday is June 3rd. She'll share her birthday with her only cousin on Jay's side of the family. Our niece, Linnea, was born June 3rd, 1985 and Penny was born June 3rd, 1995. So, they are exactly ten years apart. Speaking of Linnea, we're excited for her that she'll be married late next summer. What's cool is that Penny should be able to be part of her cousin's wedding!

Some of the exciting news is that we've been able to connect with at least three families now who have either already adopted from the same orphanage or who is in the process. In fact, one lady should be going to get her preteen daughter at the Udon Thani Girls' Home this Monday/Tuesday. This single mom lives in Pennsylvania, just about an hour from my best friend, Hisano. So, we're hoping that our two girls will be able to keep in touch at least by e-mail. And maybe someday we'll be able to go out to Pennsylvania so Penny can see her girlfriend and her mommy can see hers. Another family who just adopted twins from the orphanage has a relative who lives in Boulder. So, maybe someday they'll be able to come out here to Colorado for a visit. And the third family lives in Thailand as missionaries. So, we're hoping to visit them when we go pick up Penny. It's so neat how we're meeting such wonderful people all around the world, already, through this amazing journey of adoption. It feels like our family is already growing even before Penny comes home.

I'll leave you with a scene from snowy Colorado. This is Jay shoveling our driveway before we went to church this morning. We usually walk. But, today we opted to drive since it was barely above 10 degrees F and it was icy.

A round of antibiotics

It's not easy being teachers. Jay and I are both on antibiotics for sinus infections. He has a concert tomorrow night. And he's singing in the Messiah Sing-Along at Redeemer Lutheran this coming Sunday night. So, hopefully, he'll be over the worst of the crud by then. Things are going a little smoother this week in my new preschool room. I think everyone is getting more used to the changes. But, we shouldn't get too comfortable, as they'll be ripping out all the carpet in the school and putting in tile in the next couple of weeks. Always something to keep us on our toes.

The exciting news of the day today is that the package arrived that my parents promised us. It's an electronic translator with Thai and English. It also has Chinese, Vietnamese, Malay, Korean, and Indonesian!