Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all of my blogger friends!!
Here are a few more snapshots of our Christmas that I had wanted to post earlier.

Here's the "gingerbread house" they made from Graham Crackers.  They had a fun time working on this together.

Our tree.  I love our tree.  We always have a real tree (sniff....ahhh!) with colored lights.  Most every year, each girl has gotten a new ornament.   I have a few on there that I especially like, too, that I've collected over the years.  This year at my grandmother's house I also found a couple of old ornaments that I remember from my childhood.  Those were so fun to have this year.  Nothing fancy, just memories. We also have quite a few handmade ornaments from Guatemala. 

This is a new ornament this year.  Back in the beginning of Dec., we watched the White House Christmas special on HGTV.  It was showing how they decorated the White House this year, including interviews with Laura Bush.  They showed this Carolina Snowflake that she had ordered 250 of for a tree.  I made the comment how much I liked it.  Much to my surprise, my husband went back and watched it (it was recorded), got the name of the store where they were sold, and ordered me one.  (It's the one on the left.)

The Carolina Snowflake is handmade in Spruce Pine, NC (www.homeoftheperfectchristmastree.org).  It is handwoven, reed dyed with crushed walnut hulls, henna/madder (and green commercial dye). 
Also, remember me saying that I saw a print in a local store with my blog verse, but the frame was beat up?  James went back and got it (on top of being marked down, it was also an additional 40% off, so he got it pretty inexpensive), took it to a friend who is a framer, and had it reframed for me.  He was just full of surprises this year!

"You will show me the path of life, in your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.  Psalm 16:11"
(I didn't really feel sick, even though I looked it in that picture!  We'll chalk it up to a long week and bad lighting!)
My little girls with their new Felicity dolls.
We've had a pretty quiet week.  We still have some sickness going on.  My parents did get to come for Christmas for 2 days instead of 5, but we've had several taking turns with some awful stuff--but all different, it seems.  Briana is the one sick now.  Tonight we will just hang out here, play a board game, maybe make some cider.  I made a double enchilada casserole last night, so we will have the other one tonight. 
Wishing everyone a blessed and Happy New Year's Day.

Letitia

Christmas in Our Home

Our family has been enjoying the Christmas season, although, or perhaps because, we haven't done much.  We have enjoyed having Advent together most nights.  If we have to miss a night, we catch back up the next one.  One of our other family traditions is, after Advent, we pray for the people we have received a Christmas card from that day.  A couple of nights a week, we all sit around the tree, turn out all but the tree lights, and sing Christmas carols and other Christmas favorites.  We have a fun time with that.  Sometimes we forget the words or get our verses all mixed up, and we've added motions to some of the fun songs.
    On Dec. 10, Marissa and Daniella participated in our church's children's Christmas program.  They were both so excited.  This was the first program Daniella had ever been in.  She had a short solo.  Marissa also had a solo, as well as a speaking part.  She had quite a few lines.  This was her first time with a speaking part, and she was pretty nervous, but did great.  She said singing solos is much easier than speaking!  It wouldn't be to me! 
They are the 2 to the left.  Everyone is in summer clothes because the setting was a Christmas cruise.  They were getting ready to sing their solos. 
    The next day, Ashley and Briana went with my mom and dad to Charlotte, N.C.   Ashley, Briana, and my mom volunteered at the collection center for Samaritan's Purse shoeboxes.  Their job was to open up the boxes, take out the payment and forms, check for any other money that may have been put in, and close the boxes back up.  If you've ever packed a shoebox to the rim, like we do, and spent 10 min. rearranging everything to get it to fit, then you will understand that that job was not necessarily an easy task!  I'm sure it's even harder for the group whose job is to sort through and take out the "no-no" items.  Ashley said she didn't want to see another rubber band for a long time.  Her hands were sore from being popped by them.  But, they had a blast.  In fact, they were only signed up for 4 hours, but asked if they could stay longer.  They ended up working 5 1/2 hours.  They are already planning for next year.  My mom had to stop before the 4 hours was up.  She had been sick, was feeling some better, but relapsed. 

 These are all stacks and stack of shoeboxes.  And, those are just the ones that had been processed at that particular center, THAT day, up until 1:00 !     James, Marissa, Daniella, and I went to our homeschool group's Christmas party on the 12th.  We had a nice time, eating, socializing, and doing some crafts.  I was on clean-up duty, so after that was finished, about 4 or 5 moms sat around talking for a while, while our children played outside, since it was a warm day. 
    Other than shopping, that has been about the extent of our activities--and they were all in 3 days time.  Ashley is in our church choir, and they had their program this past Sunday morning.  It was so pretty this year.    James and I went on a shopping date last Sat.  We got quite a lot of shopping finished up.  We were going to splurge and go to Texas Road House (I was craving some ribs!), but there was a minimum 1 hour wait time.  We went to Chic-Fil-A instead! 
    Every other year, my parents spend Christmas with us here.   This is supposed to be their year to come.  We are praying they will be able to.  Please pray for their (and our) health.  When my mom relapsed in Charlotte, she went steadily downhill.  She finally went to the doctor last Friday, and they told her she had a rattle in her chest.  She also has a sinus infection.  She's on antibiotics, and seemed to be getting better.  She had been 48 hours without fever, but last night started running one again and hurting in her chest.  She says she doesn't hurt this morning, so we don't know what's going on.  My dad is coughing a lot, too.  Daniella had a cold last week, but is slowly getting over it.  Then yesterday, I woke up with a stomach bug.  I was running 101.5 temp yesterday, but seem to be a lot better today.  I'm still hurting a little, and kind of weakly feeling, but much better than yesterday.  I don't seem to have fever today, either, which is good.  Ugh.  That fever, was awful.  So, this morning, Briana wakes up--kind of--really late, and feels horrible.  She had had a very restless night, probably with fever.  She was running 101.4 temp.  She has no symptoms so far.  I'm hoping she's going to do what she does lots of times.  Many, many times through the years, she would run a really high fever (104, 105).  We would struggle to keep it at 100-101 for 2 or 3 days, then she would be fine.  She would never be sick.  That's actually how our bodies are supposed to work, so I am praying that she will do the same thing this time.  She's loading up on Vit. C and Goldenseal.  Anyway, please pray, if you will, that everyone will be well enough for my mom and dad to come, and for us all to enjoy Christmas.  I don't want them to spend Christmas alone, and we want them to get to be here.
   We were all supposed to go to Dollywood yesterday to see the Christmas shows and lights.  Since I was sick, but it was warm, James took Briana, Marissa, and Daniella to ride rides for a couple of hours.  We were hoping I'd be well enough to do the shows today, but I'm not, and Briana is not.  I hope sometime before the end of the year, we'll get there.
I hope everyone is having a blessed Christmas season, and enjoying the fun and blessings of being a child of God.

Letitia

P.S.  Oh, it was so cool.  When James and I were shopping the other night, I saw a beautiful print that had my blog verse on it.  I would have asked for it for Christmas, but it was on sale because the frame was in bad shape.      
   

Marissa's Adoption

Today we celebrated the 9th anniversary of Marissa's adoption.  She loves her special day, that she prefers to call Gotcha Day--"because we're so glad we've gotcha!"  We celebrated with her yearly request of homemade ice cream sandwiches--toll house cookies with vanilla ice cream between two.  We also spent time as a family looking at her scrapbook of our trip to get her, and telling her stories again of things that happened on the trip, what we did that day, and where we were at "this" time.  Tonight, at her request, we are having the always healthy Papa John's pizza for supper.

Marissa was born on May 13, 1997, and weighed 5 lb. 4 oz.    They told us it was a 90% chance that we would have a boy, because most Guatemalan adoptions are boys.  What a surprise when they finally called us late in June to tell us of our referral, and they said we had a little girl.  Of course, we were so excited, and a girl was just fine with us.  We already had two, ages 10 and 7 at the time, so we knew what to do with them! 

It was such a long wait until we were finally able to go get her.  Everything with her adoption went smoothly, but we were new at this, were not getting enough information, didn't know anyone else who had gone through this, and if there were online groups at the time, we sure didn't know about them.  At one point they told us to tentatively plan on going the end of October.  The last week of Oct. came, and we had heard nothing.  We called, and were told, "Oh, no.  You aren't going yet.  We had to get her birth certificate authenticated at the hospital where she was born.  We put it on a "Chicken Bus", and will just have to wait until they send it back."  Oh, my.  Have you ever seen a Chicken Bus?  Plus, they were sending it up into the highlands, several hours away.  We didn't know if we'd ever see that birth certificate!  As Thanksgiving approached, and we had gotten the birth certificate, we knew the call should be coming soon.  We were just waiting on her passport and final approval by the American Embassy.  The call finally came on Monday, Dec. 1.  We were told we needed to be in Guatemala by Wed. night.  You should have seen the travel agent's mouth drop open when James told her we needed 4 tickets to Guatemala, leaving in less than 2 days.  We got up the next morning, drove to Atlanta, and spent the night.  Wednesday morning, we flew out of Atlanta to Houston, had a 4 hour layover, plus an onboard delay, and arrived in Guatemala City close to 9:00 pm.  We were in the air 6 hours.  I should mention that this was the first time I'd ever been on a plane.  I prayed a whole lot!  On top of that, I arrived (very abruptly--Guatemala City has a VERY short runway) in a country where I didn't speak their language, and was scared to death.  Our foster mother's grown son met us at the airport, and we took a wild, fast ride through the streets of Guatmala City.  Have you ever seen Mr. Toad's Wild Ride?  He took us to the foster home to get Marissa, we filled out paperwork, then he took us to the hotel, dropped us off, and said, "See you in 2 days."  That was it.  We were totally on our own, with a new baby that we knew nothing about, a hotel where no one spoke English, and we were the only guests. 

But, we had our baby girl.

Meeting Marissa for the first time.

Marissa was 6 months, 3 weeks old.  She was very tiny, and wore 3 months size clothes.  It was about 10:00 pm, but she was wide awake and playing.  We gave her a soft bear rattle, that somehow became affectionately known as "Bobby".  She loved playing with him, and watching the ceiling fan turn.  She wouldn't settle down for us, but by about 11:00, she finally fussed herself to sleep.  She was up at 4:15 crying.  I sat on the toilet and fed her a bottle, trying to let Ashley and Briana sleep!  We stayed up after that, and had to be at the American Embassy at 7:00.  That was another adventure.   After a few hours there, we walked back to the hotel and rested for a while. 

Then we looked for McDonald's.  That was the next adventure.  It was a very easy, fairly short walk from the hotel, we had a map that the lady at the Consulate's office had drawn for us, and we couldn't find that place to save our lives.  We walked for an hour in dress shoes, on streets we probably shouldn't have been on, in traffic that would run over you in a heartbeat, and tried desperately to ask people for directions before we found it, and went, "Oh, duh, there it is." 

After lunch, and resting from being hot and "famished", we did some shopping across the street.  James had to go back in the afternoon to pick up her visa, and the next morning we were back at the airport at 6:30.  Marissa did great on the flight home, and went to sleep as soon as we got in the car. 

Marissa had a lot of physical catching up to do.  At 7 months, she couldn't sit alone, could not support any weight at all with her legs (as soon as you tried to stand her up, her legs just folded under her), and could not lift her head when she was lying on her stomach.  She spent the next week, catching up quickly.  Within a few days she could sit up.  My in-laws bought her a bouncy seat that you hang in the doorway, and after teaching her how to push with her feet, within a couple of days she was a bouncing maniac! 

Marissa is a fun, adventurous, mischievious, cutie pie.  She is smart, is good at solving problems, and loves to explore new things and places.  She loves horses, pink, her cat, sparkles, mud, playing and reading outside, her sisters, the computer, and history.

We are so happy God brought her into our family.  We are all blessed.

                          

               We Love You, Marissa

         

Addition:  Tonight after we got the little ones all tucked in, Marissa called me back up.  With tears in her eyes, she hugged me super tight, and said, "I'm so glad you adopted me.  You are the best mother I could have."  Wow.  Very humbling.  I know that I am the mother God gave her, I know it was his perfect match, but I know I am not the best mother I could be.  For some reason, her statement has a whole other significance with her being adopted.  Help me, Lord, to be worthy of her title.  Help me to be the mother she needs me to be.  Thank you for the precious gift of Marissa. 

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