Happy Holidays! And Ho, Ho, Ho!

Calling all Kings from Afar and Shepards Keeping Watch... Best wishes to all our family and friends during this beautiful and magical season. May God bless you as you venture through 2007!

Construction Through The Holidays...

We were hoping for a new baby and a new house by Christmas... maybe next year. The construction, dust and dirt continues. Oh, well. There must have been alot of dirt in the manger too, right? Things are progressing... slowly. We have learned alot during this process, including some inspectors are more strict than others. Check out the before and after photos of what we're attempting to do. I couldn't get them to download in chronological order. They should be 1) our little house with grass in front 2) "boys" watching the cement mixer 3) Julian standing in the framing and 4) the house as it is today with windows, unfinished door and some plywood.

No new news on the baby. We pray she's healthy and happy during her months of waiting for us to show up.

The boys have been busy with school, piano and swim lessons and Indian Guides. Jeff is the Assistant Nation Chief for the Indian Guides. He seems to enjoy the activities with the dads of other active boys.

We hope to see many of you during the holiday season. Please drop by if you're around (especially those of you who are good with a hammer, electrical outlet installation or soldering tool).

Happy November!

Colette and "The Boys"

More waiting but keeping busy...

We have run into some snags with the adoption. The time frame between your file going to China and receiving your baby has increased considerably. Remember our paperwork went to China in October 2005. Now the Chinese government says we can expect a referral in early 2007. Meanwhile, we're keeping busy.

Gabriel finally lost his 2 front teeth. He's so cautious about everything so we had to beg him to wiggle them and pull them out. Jeff and I even wiggled them at night while he was sleeping because his new teeth were coming in. He started kindergarten and seems to have adjusted fine. Waiting the extra year for kindergarten proved to be the right decision and there are other 6 year olds in his class. He loves his teacher. Although he tries to convince us that kinder is really long (even though it's actually 45 minutes less than his pre-k class last year).

Julian is enjoying his new preschool so much so that he's been getting up at 4:00 a.m., getting dressed by himself and coming in to beg us for breakfast on school days. Our new house rule is that no one leaves their beds until they see sunshine. He became quite a good swimmer this year even though he's still "little but mighty". Both boys are spending alot of time in their fort Jeff built them out of wood recycled from the facade of our house.

Jeff has been working on base alot and working on our addition. They poured the foundation yesterday (finally) and look forward to the sounds of pneumatic nail guns this week. Colette has been picking out flooring, paint, doors, cabinets etc. We can't wait to have our own bathroom.

We will keep you posted on any changes in the family. We look forward to meeting our "Mei Mei" (little sister in Chinese). Take care and God bless!

C & The Gang

The Wait

This is a journal of our long life's journey to add a baby girl to our family. All of our adoption paperwork is in China. Now we just wait and wait. Our social worker said the wait time to a match is 11 months. We can expect a referal in September. The boys want to buy clothes for the baby. We keep telling them to wait until we have her so we know what size she is.

While we're waiting we are trying to get some things done. We are going to begin construction on the new master suite and laundry room within the next few weeks. The week before Easter we will be taking a trip up to Monterey and Big Sur. The boys love nature and the Monterey Aquarium. Yesterday we enrolled Gabriel in Kindergarten for Fall. He will attend Colette's grade school. We also enrolled Julian in a Presbyterian preschool for Fall. Both schools seem like a good match for our family.

We'll keep everyone posted on adoption news and Gabe's loose teeth.