Christmas Fun

Fun stuff. We went down to Los Angeles for Christmas. We are a lot, saw a lot of friends and family, and opened LOTS of presents (well, at least the children did - and they loved it). The adorable little girl is my niece, Tabitha. And that is Nathan holding his cousin Evan in the last piccy.

So thankful for the Christmas season and all that it brings. Most thankful for God giving us His wonderful gift - JESUS. Praise Him - He makes all the difference. He is Life itself :-).

Hair Today, Goin' Tomorrow {to Someone Else}

Well, I chopped it. My hair. This is the second time I have grown out my hair to donate to Locks of Love. If you have never heard of it, Locks of Love is an organization that takes hair (and monetary) donations and creates wigs for children with alopecia areata. Alopecia areata is an autoimmune disease where your body treats hair as an antigen - so people with this condition do not have hair on parts of their body, usually the scalp. It can happen where it is alopecia totalis - where hair does not grow at all on the scalp. As you can imagine, this can be very stigmatizing and devastating for children and adults alike. The cool thing is that 80% of the donations to Locks of Love are actually from children who want to help other children. Isn't that awesome? You can check them out here www.locksoflove.org

Those of you who know me know that I have very thick and bushy hair that becomes a wild beast when it gets long (thus the ever-present ponytail once it is long enough to be tied up). I have had to show my ever growing hair who's boss by keeping it under literal wraps and in things like scrunchies, bands, and hairagami. Anyway - it finally was long enough so that I could cut off the required 10 inches and still have enough to look ok (you can be the judge of that). So - I miss my ponytail, I do - but I am so happy that my hair is going off to help someone. And I feel so much lighter, too :-).

Donuts and Cafe

There is this little donut shoppe near our house. The kids are always wanting to go there, so I promised them that on the first day of winter break - we would sleep in, and then head over to Donuts and Cafe. It was gooooooood. Matthew orderes a dozen glazed rainbow sprinkled donut holes, Aaron ordered one maple glazed donut, and Nathan ordered an egg and cheese croissant sandwich (but I have captured photographic evidence that he was helping with the donut holes as well!).

Yumminess

Good food - good company :-). We were invited for a homemade pizza dinner at the Ho family's home. Sooo good.
There were 4 kinds of pizza - Hawaiian, garlic chicken alfredo, veggie, and Brazilian (hard boiled eggs, pepperoni and onions!). Venkat brough samosas. Mmmmmmm.


Oh yes, and homemade cookies made by the beauteous Lydia. She is decorating Finnish spice cookies here. . .


And here are some black and white hearts. . .


Oh - and here is a different kind of yumminess :-).


And finally - some good male bonding! Dave brought the laptops, hub, and AOE so that the boys (of all ages) could try regicide.

Holiday Program

Hopefully I can upload a short video here of the boys' Christmas program at PILA. This song is called "Xiao Jin Yu" which means "Little Goldfish." You can see Nathan workin' it :-). Unfortunately, things shrink when I upload onto blogger, so it really is not a clear video at all :-(. Nathan is almost right in the middle int he back row, and Matthew is over on the right side wearing a brown striped poncho.

Wordless Wednesday

DTC

As of yesterday, our dossier was sent to China!!!
There is just an alphabet soup of acronyms for adoption terminology. One of the most anticipated acronyms is DTC - documents to China. And now we are DTC :-).

According to Xiaoqing - to get an LID (log-in date), we need to wait about 10-14 days after DTC. After we have an LID, we will be eligible to receive a referral for a child off the shared list that comes out once a month from China.

Very very exciting!

Thankfully, the Lord resolved our cashier's check complication through a lot of hard work from Xiaoqing. She is terrific!