Christmas Stuff

We had our family part with my siblings this weekend. My older brother and his wife have hosted it the last few years. It's getting harder and harder to find a space where everyone can fit. They pulled it off yet again and it was a good time.

The food was great. It was fun to watch baby Abbie open her presents. For gift exchanges between my siblings, we changed the rules up a bit this year and said the gifts had to be made or had to be a form of service.

My sister and her husband drew our names and they made us 3 beautiful ornaments with pictures of Nathan, Jessica and Malot on them. I'll post pictures as soon as I figure out the best way to capture them. I was quite touched by them - literally speechless to see Malot's little smiling face on that ornament. Thank you, Z and Aaron. That was the perfect gift for us.

Brent and I don't do much around our own house for Christmas over the last two years. We both love Christmas, don't get me wrong. But lately our Christmas to each other is "the next Haiti trip". Not gonna buy a tree when that money could go to a Haiti trip. Neither of us really need anything, but what we both want is a Haiti trip. You get the idea.

We're just saving and focusing everything on that. I'm sure some of the neighbors wonder if we've changed religions as we don't have a tree up or anything. It's not that, it's just that our hearts are in Haiti and we want to really enjoy our next tree - and have kids home with us to join in the fun.

We ran an errand to Cabella's last night. For those of you that may not be familiar with it, Cabella's is an enormous hunting and fishing store. We have a ginormous store not to far from us. Inside it's practically a wildlife museum with all the different stuffed and mounted animals from all over the world.

When we're at Cabella's I normally think about our kids because I try to imagine what their reactions will be when we get them home and they can see this or that. But this last trip was different for us because we ran into two other families that had adopted black children. And watching the children run around and be so excited and the brief bit we spoke to one of the parents.... It was just a different reminder that sometime this will end and we'll be done and they'll be ours.
Next year.... please let it end soon....