Merry Christmas

Juno and Indy want to wish all of our friends and family a Very Merry Christmas!!!

Santa made a stop at our house for 2 naughty puppies, but I guess Santa thought they were nice enough to get a little something in their stockings!!!

Juno couldn't make up her mind what she wanted to play with. Eventually she settled on her new bouncy ball!


This is (hopefully) the last Christmas it will be just the two of us! Our thoughts are truly in Ethiopia this Christmas morning. There are 11 families with our adoption agency leaving for Ethiopia this morning and I wish I was on that plane! Our hearts are divided around this world and we long for the day that we can celebrate the holidays with our little one!

We can't wait to start new and enjoy old Christmas traditions with our children! This is a time of celebration but there is an ache in our hearts for the children who never get to celebrate Christmas. The children who will never wake up to find Christmas presents under the tree or hugs and kisses from their parents on Christmas morning.

We couldn't go through this Christmas-time without picking up a few special things for our precious baby we are waiting and thinking about constantly:

This gift will be the very first gift we are able to give our little one. As soon as we get a referral we get to send a few small items to him, one of which is a soft photo album where he will get his first glimpse of his new, weird looking parents half a world away!


We also purchased this special adoption book for our baby. I love to read and I cannot wait to start reading to our kids. This book is going to be so perfect for our adoption journey. We wrote a special little message to Dash on it on this Christmas of 2009!

To the baby we call "Dash" On Christmas 2009,

Our sweet little Ethiopian blessing we are waiting and wishing for! We cannot wait to see your face and hop on a plane to come bring you home to us. As we celebrate Christmas just the two of us for the last time, we are thinking about you constantly. We wonder if you have been born yet or know you will be born very soon! We keep thinking about our first Christmas with you next year and are so excited to share such a special time of year with you! You are always in our thoughts and prayers. We know God is going to bring you to us and we can't wait to meet the child He has specifically chosen for us! Waiting for you to come home is hard but we know it will be so worth it in the end!

1 samuel 1:27 "For this child I prayed"

You are truly our wish come true!

We love you so very much,

Mommy and Daddy

The last present under the tree was more fun for me to open :) We found an awesome little gift set filled with baby toys. Now the fun of getting the puppies to understand that the baby toys are NOT puppy toys.

We thank you for being part of our lives! We are gaining a new understanding for the real Christmas story and can find ourselves relating to multiple characters in the story.

Mary following the calling God gave to her life no matter how difficult that calling was for her to make. She was accepting a calling that should have forced her to be stoned to death. She was truly an amazing woman of God. We can no way relate to just how huge the calling on her life was, but we can relate to following God someplace we thought was impossible.

Joseph, we can truly relate with Joseph's story. The prophecy was that Jesus would come from the line of David. That prophecy came true through Joseph adopting the Christ-Son as Joseph was a descendant of the line of David. How cool is that? Joseph had no blood-link to Jesus but God and Jesus recognized the adoption by Joseph and Joseph really, truly, in every right was Jesus' earthly father! Joseph could have so easily walked away but if he had, the prophecy wouldn't have come true. He played such a vital role in the Christmas story but his unique contribution is so easily overlooked. He saved Mary and Jesus' lives! What an amazing father he was!

As our pastor pointed out this past Sunday how great the journey was for the wise-men. It could have taken years for them to complete the journey they were called to embark on. Their following God's command to go and worship Jesus was an act of worship. The year or more it took for them to travel to Jesus was an act of worship. It couldn't have been easy and I am sure more than once they probably thought they were crazy and had no clue why they were traveling so far. I have to believe they had their doubts about what they were doing, but they continued and worshipped all the while! We can totally relate to the wise men :)

Jesus truly is the reason for the season! What an amazing Savior he was and still is. God giving his son for us - as I am embarking on this journey to parenthood - I just can't imagine giving your son to suffer so other people who would never truly understand or be grateful enough could live.

What an incredible story we are celebrating today! Merry Christmas to you all :)