Christmas Blessings

Every room in our home is filled with reminders that we serve an awesome and loving God and blessed with great friends, both here at home and new friends from all over the world.

Our freezer was filled with meals from the adoption community, Red Letter, and our church. We have received many care packages and soon Abby will have new hair. Thanks to some great guys from OU, the kids have a new club house to play in.

Thank you all so much for helping us care for Abby and for making her feel so loved. She carries your cards and letters around with her all day long and tells everyone that her friends love her and are praying for her. Thanks.

I love everything about Christmas, especially decorating our home, doing fun projects with the kids and teaching our children why we celebrate. This year is tough because we are so tired, stretched to our limits and behind on many tasks. It is more important than ever to have a great Christmas, because she is so sick. We don't want to squander any chance to have some memories with her in case God calls her on home.

Another reason we want to have wonderful Christmas is because this will be our nine year old daughter's, Samrawit, first Christmas with our family. Last Christmas she was living at an orphanage in Ethiopia. I want us to have happy memories of this year, even in the midst of all of our challenges. I was worried about how we would be able to do everything that we want to do, while still caring for Abby.

Sunday, friends from our church decorated the outside of our home with Christmas lights and decorated our Christmas tree. They brought cider and cookies for the kids to decorate. The kids were so excited. We didn't ask them to do it, they are just kind and loving friends. We are very grateful they decorated and had a lot of fun while they were here.

You'll notice all these pictures are of the children. Every picture I took of the adults had at least one humbug adult trying to dive out of the picture. I though I was the only one who did that. :-)

Samrawit decorating a tree for the first time. Abby loves watching her big sister.

Abby, Abby's friend Megan and Landis. Abby calls her "MY Megan".

Landis had more icing on his shirt than he did on the cookies.

Thank you all for making this holiday special.

Samrawit had never decorated cookies before. While we were waiting for her adoption to be complete and her to come home , I was sad that we had missed so many of those firsts that all parents love to see. Since she has been home, we have seen her experience so many new things. It was fun to show her something else new.

Thank you all so much for decorating our home and making our Christmas special.