Hope

Friday evening we got to visit with some very old friends and meet their two new sons (new since we last saw them!)...a three year old and a 16 month old...and the wife is seven months along with their third son. They have been in the process of adopting from China, as well, for nearly four years now, but have to keep putting their file on hold because of unexpected pregnancies. What a joy that is for a couple who began their marriage with the belief that they would probably never be able to have children biologically!...yet, it is a frustration to them that they are not allowed to proceed with their adoption in the meantime. It is rather interesting to hear of their adoption experience... The family lives in an Asian country and has for the past decade. Not being in America, they do not have an actual adoption agency to "go through"...they wind up speaking with Caring Bridge staff and the CCAA staff directly. It sounds like, until recently, the Caring Bridge staff and the CCAA staff were right there in the same building (now, it seems they are across the street from each other) and both, very small offices, appeared to have overlapping staff! Surprisingly enough, the CCAA has been very accessible to this couple. They have never had difficulty reaching a staff member on the phone and the staff members in that small office have always been very helpful and easy to work with. I thought that was really interesting to hear. Of course, having lived long-term in Asia, the process is very different for them. But, even being on the "expedited" list, once their file is reactivated they will still have to wait far longer than we did with our adoptions six and thirteen years ago.

The couple's children (having spent their lives in Asia) are as fluent in Chinese as they are in English. It was wonderful to get to see them again, if only briefly, and to introduce them to our son, Doug, whom they had not yet met.

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The kids' Christmas break began Friday at 1:00. I finished up my shift at work at 9pm the evening before...and NONE of us are going back to school or work until Monday Jan. 6th! It is nice all being able to be off together! I like the flexibility of our new jobs! Since we will be traveling off and on through the holidays, we decided to have our own immediate Christmas celebration Saturday morning. Rayna had gone to a Christmas caroling/Overnight party with her GA group at church Friday evening and didn't get home until 9:30am Saturday (yesterday). Her teacher told Grant Rayna would be sleepy and probably need a nap early in the day since she was running strong until 2:30am. She was wrong! Rayna ran ninety to nothing all day yesterday without the least hint of tiredness (if you didn't look at her watery little eyes) and finally, at 10:45pm last night, I decided to be a PARENT and make my little bundle of energy SHUT her eyes and GO to sleep. (Mind you, her normally enforced bedtime is 7pm...but, with it being a holiday, I had thought I would let the kids stay up later, telling them they could play QUIETLY in their semi-dark rooms as long as they stayed in their beds. I thought they would fall to sleep on their own. Wrong! Finally had to go in and tell them, it was time to GO to sleep! Darcy was still ON THE PHONE...in the middle of a conference call with two of her friends. Doug was engrossed in a new game he had received for his Nintendo DS and Rayna was busy chatting to her I-Dog and stroking his "face" and checking out his "mood" by tapping his nose.... The world has definitely changed from when I was a kid!

We had PLANNED on opening gifts in the morning and then heading out to Branson to see the Christmas lights at Silver Dollar City. That didn't pan out! Now, mind you, we have one child that has regular lapses in judgment, quite understandably, in the wake of his brain injury and then we have two children who do not have any unusual challenges. So, which of our children do you think left the house in bitterly FREEZING cold, windy weather WITHOUT THEIR COATS? My two fashion conscious daughters! The teenager is too cool to wear a coat. She spends her life wearing a Bolivar hoodie...most of the time with just her arms put through it, but not her head or body, so it drapes down in front of her like a little square blanket, the hood dangling near her knees while the back of the hoodie covers her front. I think it looks bizarre and makes no sense, but I am 46, not 13! Then there is little sister who THINKS she is 13 and needs to keep up with big sister. So it was, that my six year old left home with only a thin, little Spring jacket on and Darcy was wearing just her perpetual hoodie. Doug, more sensible than his sisters, had a winter coat on...ZIPPED with the hood pulled over his head! Grant and I had winter coats on (and were STILL freezing even with them on). The kids had all piled into the van before we came out, so we didn't realize until our first stop in SPRINGFIELD that 2/3 of our children were dressed to succumb to hypothermia. We were way too far from home, by that point, to turn around and go back. We gave them the lecture (once more!) about NEVER leaving the house in the dead of winter WITHOUT a COAT...even if they didn't want to wear it, they at least had to BRING it so that if we had CAR TROUBLE they would have it. As it was, we had been planning on walking around all evening in Branson admiring the lights at Silver Dollar City. No way that was going to happen with two kids coatless... (sigh)

Instead, we ate lunch at Wing Stop in Springfield and then went on to Branson to take care of one Christmas shopping errand we needed to do there. Then, the girls nearly popsicles, we geared all the rest of the day's activities to INDOOR things. We had dessert at McFarland's while waiting for seating time for the movie, then we saw Desperaux at the nice I-Max theater. It was a really sweet, cute movie. Then we went to WalMart and Target in Springfield to pick up a lamp for Rayna's room and just bum around a bit. Then we had supper at my favorite restaurant, Mr. Chen's, in Springfield and headed on back home. The day was NOTHING like we had planned...but it was a fun, relaxing day together, none-the-less!

I am thinking about purchasing two of the most embarrassingly ugly "uncool" coats in the world and keeping them tucked away in the back of the van...so that the next time our girls leave home without their coats, we will have our bases covered, anyway! They need to be REALLY ugly (and cheap, but warm) coats...don't even need to be the the exact right size... Hmmm...I'm gonna keep my eyes out for two of those! I cannot count the number of times one or both of our daughters have thrown a wrench in our plans by not bringing their coats. I just don't get it. It is FREEZING COLD, WITH A WICKED BITTER WIND BLOWING...why should your mother have to check up and make sure you are wearing a coat! (Now that I am thinking of it, I remember in the summer, our struggle was SHOES! Darcy would leave the house barefooted and we wouldn't discover it until we stopped off a store or restaurant and would discover we had one of our children shoeless and so we couldn't go in!) And now that I think about that, it reminds me of something else...Grant and I finally had to lay down the law and forbid Darcy from wearing her flip flops late this last November because even though it was COLD out, this child was still wearing flip flops to school...not even the nice leather ones, but just cheap foam and plastic ones like you would wear at the pool! And SHORTS...the child got totally frustrated with me just last week because I told her she absolutely could not wear SHORTS to school.

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One final, obligatory entry....
Grant said I HAD to put this one on the blog. When we were opening presents yesterday, Rayna brought out a beautifully wrapped present that she had brought home with her from her overnighter. Over the dark blue paper, were white letters she had cut out and carefully glued in place all across the top of the package...H-O-P-E. Doug, got all hyperactive when he saw the lettering and started going on and on about his friend, Hope. I think he does not realize that the word "hope" is not JUST his friend's name. So, I told him, "Doug, "hope" is also a word that means "hope"." Seemed like a reasonable assertion to me! Grant, however was overtaken with a spasm of laughter. Well...how DO you explain the meaning of the word "hope", anyway!

We had barely recovered from my reasonable assertion when we opened our present from our youngest daughter. It was empty! We waited for her to explain, but she didn't seem to realize it might require any explanation! Finally, her dad prodded her, "Rayna, was there something your teacher told you to tell us about this present when we opened it?" "No", she replied as she happily bounced off. Leaving us looking at each other in confusion and laughing anew. She thought again, and called over her shoulder, "There's just my love for you in that box." And that is the best present of all!