Life is Full of Surprises!

How true that life is full of surprises...some good, some bad. We've been feeling that strongly since we moved into our new home. We've been very busy and excited to make our new place look like our own. We've also battled illness and fatigue from our jobs. This is the busy season of prepping for Spring concerts for Jay. I've been painting and cleaning a lot, thus the lack of recent blogs. We had a joyous and sorrowful Easter. On the Saturday before Easter I enjoyed being a part of our Japanese resurrection celebration in the morning. And in the evening we attended Timberline Church. But that night we received the shocking news that my cousin who is my age and I grew up with suddenly passed away while in surgery. On Easter day I managed to hold my emotions at bay as we enjoyed worshipping at Redeemer Lutheran Church and invited my friends, the Kameyama's over for a meal and Easter egg hunt. But, by Monday at naptime I started to let the tears flow. So, I'll be attending the visitation and funeral services on Wed. and Thurs. I'll fly out tomorrow and back on Thursday. It'll be a whirlwind trip. Please pray for the family members of my cousin, Pam. She leaves behind her twin sister, Pat, an elder sister and parents, her husband and two sons and many extended family members. We are all in shock. She and Pat were the closest thing I had to sisters. We were in school together in the same class through 4th grade. I'm so thankful I saw her briefly last summer in Omaha.

Birthday Bash

Yesterday on my birthday we celebrated with my friend, Tomoko and her son, Shoichi. They brought us lunch and she made me the most beautiful tiny teddy bear. It looks like a Steiff bear! She's very talented to make something so intricate. After we ate they stuck around and helped out with some yard work, as they live in a condo with no yard space at all and Shoichi is excited to play in our backyard. He calls it Chandra's park. After that we met up again in Greeley at a mutual friend's home. Jaeyoun's daughter, Jiann was celebrating her 1st birthday. We discovered that Koreans go all-out in celebrating a child's first birthday. It was really fun to see them and taste their delicious food. But, Jay was starting to come down with something. In fact, tomorrow he's lined up a sub as he had a pretty miserable day at school today. I'm thankful to be well, as I heard that three of our four Pre-K teachers presently have the flu.

Thinking of Our Sweetie on my Birthday

This weekend I've been having fun putting together a little package for our sweetheart across the ocean. Some people from our adoption agency are traveling to Thailand on March 22nd. So, we have the opportunity to mail a package for Penny to the agency in Seattle. Then they'll take it with them to have it delivered. This time they won't be traveling to Udon Thani because there are no new children available for adoption there. The requirements for the package is that all items fit inside a gallon size baggy. So, I got some cute little things from the dollar store like lotion, a purse, stickers, notecards, a bracelet, etc. See picture below.
Yesterday we also had fun celebrating my birthday a day early. We met up with a family that I got to know through my school. I used to teach their daughter, Micah. I have to admit that Micah was one of my favorite kids. She grew rather attached to me, as well. She and her sister, McKenna are real angels. I can't wait to have Penny meet them. I think they'd make great playmates with our daughter. And perhaps they can help her learn English. Something that seemed very serendipitous was that the mug that they gave me for my birthday says, "Made in Thailand" on the bottom. Ah, again my heart turns towards our princess over the ocean. I sure hope we hear something soon about our daughter. The best news I've heard so far I got on Friday. Our adoption coordinator said she's expecting to receive some more referrals in about 2-3 weeks. She said she can't guarantee it but there's a chance ours may be one of them. I pray that it is! The pictures below are of our friends, Daron and Becky (Mom & Dad) with their daughter, McKenna. And the other is of Jay and me with their daughter, Micah. Yes, I did get a hair cut, a little shorter than I had planned...but, hey, I need to get ready for the heat and humidity of Thailand, right?!

Craziness in Colorado

Sorry I haven't been blogging lately. I'm trying to get caught up on all of the great blogs of friends who are adopting. Especially loving to follow the blogs of two families who have been in Thailand getting their babies while we were in the midst of moving. Good thing it wasn't our turn to travel to Thailand, yet. I'd love to say that our first week in our new home was calm and uneventful. But, that doesn't make for a good story. We had to add a little extra drama to owning our first home. We moved in all excited last Saturday on the 23rd of February. See the video below. Saturday night I took a shower in our new shower/tub install. The next morning Jay did as well. We both noticed just a little water outside the tub and thought our shower curtain was too short for the new rounded shower rod our contractor had installed. No big deal. So on Sunday we bought a longer shower curtain. Again some more showers. On Sunday night when we still saw a little water next to the tub we thought, "Gee, are we that messy that we're still getting water outside the tub even with our longer shower curtain?" And that night Jay saw a little bit of water on top of something in the garage. He thought, "Did the movers set their water bottle on our stuff and spill some?" Just in case he looked at the ceiling with a flashlight but didn't see any dripping. We thought we'd call our contractor's plumber on Monday morning to ask about why he thought we were seeing a little water outside the tub. Well, Monday morning, shortly before leaving for work I opened the garage door to find a waterfall pouring water down on our boxes below. To make a long story short, the plumber had failed to realize that he had bent a little O-ring when screwing on the faucet of our new tub/shower. So, the water was getting behind. There happened to be a hole in the floor under our tub which caused the excess water to go straight into the ceiling area of the garage below, which then started dripping on our boxes below that. Praise God that there was very little damage to our belongings and the plumber is paying for all of the expenses of repairing the insulation/dry wall to the garage ceiling. It made for an interesting first week as we were still working full-time. I would meet with various insurance people during my lunch breaks and so we couldn't go back and clean our old duplex until Friday night. But, thankfully, we got all of our deposit money back yesterday morning. Now we are trying to discover where we moved all of our boxes in our frantic dash to get them away from the waterfall. Oh, I forgot to mention that when I got home on my lunch break on Monday I came to a scene of not only wet insulation strung across the front lawn but there were tiny dead rodent friends which had made the insulation their home.
What else is crazy is this Colorado weather. Yesterday it got up to 73 degrees and this morning I woke up to seeing snow blowing sideways. Gotta love it! Hopefully, it won't be too upsetting to Penny. I'm glad that she did not have to share in our drama of the first week in our new home.