The past few weeks have flown by! Our biggest activity is represented by the slide show at the top of the screen. We spent a week at Disney World in celebration of David's 5th birthday. Although David's birthday is in March we decided to wait to go to on this vacation until a slower time of year at the park. This turned out to be one of the best decisions as we were told that we visited the park during the slowest week of the year!

Some of the highlights from our trip included the following....

1. A lot of pleasant together time as a family (even our teenager had a good time)!

2. David got to meet his two favorite Disney characters.....

Ariel (from the Little Mermaid)

June (from Playhouse Disney's Little Einsteins)

3. Celebrating David's birthday at dinner every night (and for one breakfast)!

4. The weather, it was in the low 80's and sunny every day.

5. Meeting up with friends on our second to last day.

Emily and her good friend Jordan, whose family came down the day before we left.

6. The rides!!

7. The way Disney does everything down to the smallest details!

Signs found by where Mike and Sulley (from Monster's Inc.) were signing autographs

On another note, Ella and I both came down with strep throat almost as soon as we got home. We were thankful that this did not happen on our trip and that it's easily treatable.

The next bit of excitement for us was hosting Thanksgiving dinner! This is always a good time. We did miss having Thom & Katherine, Jennifer & Joe (and kids), and Scott's sister Julie. Our evening started out early by a group effort of searching the shopping ads for the best deals on Black Friday. Once lists were made we put the finishing touches on the food and chowed down!

Talking on the phone with Thom

Food prep

As I promised last year we did serve dinner buffet style. It made things a lot easier and people were able to enjoy their food and not worry about having to pass the potatoes, etc!

I don't know how many of you were up early on Black Friday but I was up and out the door by 3:40am in order to get in line at Kohl's. I got Emily up with me, as requested, but she backed out on going shopping with me, no surprise there! Please note that I did not get in line that early for myself but to get some deals asked for by my mother, do I get daughter of the year award for this?! I was in and out of the door quickly and in line at Target by 4:20.

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While waiting in the freezing weather outside Target, I met a woman who lives just down the street from me (I found this out by conversing with her and her daughter). She and her family have lived there for 35 years and it was fun to hear them talk about our house and the farm it used to include "back in the day". Apparently our house used to be painted white wood on the outside and the farmer who lived here would pay the neighborhood children $5 for a black rat snake because he didn't want to deal with cats to control the mice in his barns.

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I got in and out of Target quickly and headed to Meijer and bought a few things there and was home and back in bed by 6:00am. I slept in till 8:30 and then got Emily up (for the second time) and we went shopping for some deals on clothes for her wardrobe.

Later on that evening we had our friends the Apthorpe's over for dinner and an evening of good times and friends. We exchanged Christmas gifts and let the kids play while we chatted and caught up on life.

While they were over an unexpected even occurred, David lost his first tooth! We're not really sure when this happened during the evening's events but when the kids were getting some ice cream and hot cocoa I looked at David wondering what was wrong with his mouth and realized that he has a tooth missing! The thing is that he also had one coming up right behind where his baby tooth had fallen out, much like Ella did when she lost her first tooth.

That night David wrote the tooth fairy a note letting her know that he had quite literally "lost" his tooth. We couldn't find it anywhere. David woke up the next morning with the note still under his pillow and a very long face when waking me up to tell me that the tooth fairy had not come. Big oops! A little bit later he went back upstairs to get his tooth fairy note so that we could email her (yes, you can do that) and he found that she must have been "pulling" (pardon the pun) a late shift and had left David a new webkinz as a present for losing his first tooth. All long faces were forgotten and naming the new dragon webkinz was now top priority.

Jason had a teaching moment with David and Ella this past Sunday afternoon. I had purchased a new toaster at Target on Friday and was throwing out our old one when Jason decided to take it apart. David helped Jason unscrew the outside and the lesson in mechanics and circuit electricity began. I'm not sure how much they picked up but they had a good time taking apart something so familiar and seeing how it worked. They also had a good time just being kids.

Adoption Update:

There is not much to tell right now. We are still awaiting a referal from our agency but were emailed last week that our paperwork passed inspection here and is officially on it's way to Addis Ababa, the capital in Ethiopia. It's a step in the right direction!

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I'm sure December will fly by even faster than November. So until our next post please stop, remember and praise God that Jesus Christ is THE reason for this CHRISTmas season.

Life at our house is slowing down as the weather is cooling. I had ice in my birdbath yesturday morning so I had to retire it until next spring, if I leave it out I run the risk of it cracking from all the freezing and thawing that the water will do in it. It's sad to leave my garden behind for awhile but nice to get a break and focus on other things.

Soccer is officially over for everyone now and David's season was hit and miss. It seems that he played just as many games as he had cancelled for rain or a very wet field. His last game this past Saturday was cancelled but there were no tears shed over it.

We've also had a touch of something or another in our house last week. Thankfully just Ella and David were affected and the rest of us stayed healthy. I'm not sure whether or not it was the swine flu but despite this fact it's gone and hopefully never to return (yeah, right).

Along with all the weather came the falling leaves. We had one round of cleanup last weekend and were going for another but had a strong cold front blow through and fortunately for us, blew all our leaves into our neighbors yard! Before that happened the we all had a good time playing in the large leaf pile (including the dog) that we made out back by our firepit. I've included a small video of that for your enjoyment.

We had one intersting discovery as the leaves started falling from our trees. We found that we had a an abandoned wasps nest in one of the large trees in our yard. It was about a foot or so in diameter and just slightly longer from top to bottom. We saw it near the very top of the tree but that same blustery cold front I mentioned before blew it right out of the tree so we were able to get a closer look. Here it is!

An upclose look at the nest

Jason has spent a lot of time over the past year working with a few friends of his to fix up some of the old UC SAE racecars. They were able to take them out recently and race them on a nearby track and spent two Saturdays in row enjoying the fruit of thier hard labor. Here are two videos of Jason driving in one of the cars!

Jason starting the racecar and getting on the track

Jason racing on the track (in the same car as above)

No fall season would be complete without pumpkin carving and this year was no exception. We did have a twist on the traditional orange pumpkins as Ella and David picked a greenish-grey and a white pumpkin this year. Emily was absent from pumpkin carving as her social life took precidence. I was very interested to see the insides of these pumpkins, never having carved anything but orange pumpkins in the past. It proved to be very intersting.

The inside of David's pumpkin

David getting the "goop" out of his pumpkin

The inside of Ella's pumpkin

Ella getting the "goop" out of her pumpkin

Jason "carving" Ella's pumpkin with the cordless drill

The end result!

David's white pumpkin was white inside but you could see a hint of orange around the edges where it was cut. Ella's on the other hand was a very squat pumpkin and was very bright orange inside. The trouble with Ella's pumpkin was how absolutely THICK it turned out to be. Jason had to scrape for awhile to thin it out and even with that he had to use a cordless drill to carve it as the regular carving knife just wasn't "cut out" for this job!

Days later it was Halloween and with it being on a Saturday it was very enjoyable. I must say that I think that Halloween should always be scheduled on the Saturday in the fall when we change the clocks. It was wonderful to not have to worry about getting everyone home from school, fed, in their costumes, pictures taken and out the door to trick-or-treat and then in bed on time without too much of a sugar buzz! We were able to take our time and let the kids enjoy themselves, and enjoy a little extra candy. Here are our photos from Halloween. We went to Jason's parent's neighborhood to trick-or-treat (as is our tradition) because the houses are so close together, and their are ususally a good number of people around. Emily did not dress up but had a friend over to help pass out candy. Ella was a kangaroo (a costume created by us, with some sewing help from Mimi). David was Dash, the fast boy, from the Disney movie The Incredibles.

Ella, David and their cousin Nataliya (she's a bat)

Ella the kangaroo

David "Dashing" (he told me I had to get an action shot)

Emily and Rachel while handing out candy

Emily and Rachel texting between trick or treaters

David and his candy haul

Ella and her candy haul (the great part is she only eats plain M&M's, we get the rest)!

Our next update will probably not come until after Thanksgiving. We are going to Disney World the week prior to Thanksgiving and I'm sure it will take me time to sift through the many pictures that I'm sure will be taken there. This trip is in celebration of David turning 5. Although his birthday was in March and he's technically closer to six years old, we decided to wait until the fall when the crowds would be smaller to go and enjoy this special trip.

ADOPTION UPDATE

Jason and I went this morning to the federal building downtown and had our fingerprints taken for Homeland Security. This is standard procedure for those who are going through this process but it was a little intimidating. Everything went fine and it was neat to see my fingerprints larger than life up on the computer screen. It makes me think of how unique each one of us are, how God made each one of us special and individual right down the arcs, loops and whorls of our fingerprints.

Well, drumroll please.....we are officially on the waiting list for our new child! As we are open for a child of either sex from the ages of 0-3 years we were told that we are on both the girl and boy waiting lists. We are #47 on the girl's list, with a wait of about 10 months and #20 on the boys list, with a wait there of about 5 months. Because of our flexibility in gender and age we were told that our wait could be less than 5 months if a child fitting our criteria comes up for adoption and does not fit anyone else's. Suffice it to say, we are thrilled! To think that the child that God has planned for our family is only months and days away from being in our arms just gives me goose bumps!

Life goes on in our household and as the air is chilling things seem to really be getting into a routine for us as a family. Everyone is settled into school and I am extremely happy with the nip that is present in the air! Emily will finish her soccer season this Saturday (not too soon for her it seems) and David continues until the end of the month (much to his disappointment). It is not that they have not enjoyed soccer but that they are tired of it and want a break. I don't blame them, I want a break too and will be happy to not be transporting people hither and yon five to six days a week all in the name of soccer!

This past weekend Emily went to her first Homecoming. As it turned out she did not even attend her own school's event (which was a "ho down") but instead decided to go with a group of five other girls from our church who are close friends of hers. Three of the girls attended the same school and took the other three as their "dates". It was interesting to find out that a permission slip signed by both sets of parents and students had to be signed and then approved by a school official before a ticket could be bought for a student not attending that particular district. Times are changing and I guess events have occurred to make this a necessary policy. Gone are the days of taking whomever you pleased, now they are put under a microscope and examined!

In this mother's humble opinion, she BEAUTIFUL!!!!

All the girls looked sooooooo grown up and gorgeous! They started out the evening by dining at a local Italian restaurant (I was also there with two other moms but we sat at a separate table). It was curious to see that the girls all decided to split dinners between themselves and each also ended up ordering water and so their dinners were only $7 a piece without a tip (way to go girls!). They said they looked at the prices on the menu and couldn't imagine paying the money that was asked. Things always look a lot more expensive when you're spending your own money, a good reason to learn money management early in life!

After dinner they went to a ice cream parlor close by and spent some time by celebrating one of the girl's 15th birthday and enjoying some delicious ice cream!

I did not see the girls until after the dance as they were all transported back to our house by one of the moms to spend the night. It was fun to stay up with them for awhile and get the rundown on their first formal highschool dance. None of them ended up dancing with a boy and they were all appalled by the "grinding" (a type of dance that I will not describe) that was occurring on the dance floor. They were expecting the chaperones to do something about this and were disappointed to find that nothing was done about the dancing they considered "gross" (and rightfully so, it is gross).

The next day we went to a local farm (literally one mile from our house) to pick out some pumpkins and to enjoy the atmosphere. I was extremely amused to find that my sister Carolyn and her family were already there and her husband Scott remarked "Can't we go anywhere without you following us?" The reason for his statement was that the exact same thing happened the year before. We showed up to the same farm at the same time! I don't know if it was some type of internal sister radar or what but Carolyn and I have decided that we'll just have to make this an annual outing now! We finished the evening with dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant and had a very pleasant time together.

OK, do I really need to explain?! (Hint, those are not really Jason's legs!)

I'm not sure how many of you are aware that during college Jason was a part of the Formula SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) racecar team. Here is an explanation of what it is as per the official website "each student team designs, builds and tests a prototype car based on a series of rules whose purpose is both to ensure onsite event operations and promote clever problem solving". It was basically a student design competition and was formally known as the "mini Indy". If you know Jason you know this was right up his alley but since his college years he and several of his fellow team members have purchased a number of the "retired" racecars that were built and they have been being stored in our garage for quite some time.

This past evening Jason was actually at home with some friends over to work on their "racecars". The goal of all this work is to rebuild the cars and race them on a local racetrack for fun. I should explain by telling you that it has become a weekly event that Jason and one of his friends goes about an hour north of here to work on one or two of the cars but tonight the fun took place right here! I was excited about this in that he was home to put the kids to bed (I know, it's pitiful) and the kids were happy to help out too!

Adoption Update

We have exciting news to share in that last week we were able to send in our dossier! Those who are familiar with this process know that this is a huge thing! The dossier is the large chunk of paperwork I spoke of last time and we were able to get it in for processing. We were called last Friday and told that they needed some clarification on two issues which disappointed me (thinking that all was already in order) but thankfully it is nothing that is too complicated to resolve and hopefully by our next post all will be well.

The adoption is an ever present subject of conversation in our house and David in particular is eager to discuss what life will be life with his new "brother". He is rooting for a brother and doesn't really like any talk of possibly getting "another sister". He has now resorted to praying to God to ensure that his future sibling is male!

That is it for us for now. We hope that you are all doing well. Thank you for your continued interest in our family. If you know of anyone who may be interested in getting an email when I update our blog let me know and I'll be happy to add them onto my "blog update" email list!