Christmas Craziness...

The last few weeks have been kind of crazy. To start off the Christmas season's parties, we went to FI on the 19th to have my Nanny's party. It was fun seeing everybody again...we love those people! That Sunday was the Kids Christmas Play at our church....adorable. It wasn't rehearsed....it was done that way to make it more funny! And funny it was! My job was to offer the "sheep" (aka toddlers) cheerios to keep them happy in their "pen." It was great. That afternoon was my mom's side of the family's Christmas get together. We got to share what we did with our money this year instead of drawing names and buying presents. It was great to hear what everybody did with their money, and everything was covered from buying ducks and chickens internationally, to helping people well known to the family and community. Oh...Clark Griswold showed up...

That Wednesday night we had a gingerbread decorating contest with our middle school youth. Very fun as always. Until the houses started to crumble...you should ask Alison what happened ;)

And who knew that Pilsbury sugar cookie dough explodes when you cut shapes and bake them??


Here's the houses they made...

On Christmas Eve we went up to Joe's Gran's house for his side of the family's Christmas party. There were lots of funny pictures as usual, but they're on another camera...I'll post them when I get them.
Here we are by the tree...

The next morning was Christmas at my parents where we started off the day with breakfast at Mr. Roy and Mrs. Nancy's (neighbors) house. Then we came back and opened presents. Got lots of goodies...That night we drove back to Lexington to prepare for the Burns party at our house the next day. Saturday the Burns fam went to Eastern Buffet for lunch (YUM!) and came back to tell what each of us did with our money from that side of the family. Again a good time of telling how we spread God's love to others this Christmas.
That was the last of the parties, but we still had one more thing to do...see AVATAR. Joe has been dying to see this movie the last two weeks, so we went with Martha and our two great friends Sarah and Jesse to see it in 3-D. Here's us waiting in line before Joe outran two kids for the "best seats in the house."


The movie was AWESOME! Joe kept his 3-D glasses and ticket stubs because apparently this movie is going to change movie making history (like Star Wars) and we'll be able to tell our kids we saw it in theaters. Joe likes his movies.
Now its back to work for two days then off to Disney World! Woohoo!

Paperwork...Check!

According to our adoption worker, we're officially waiting. However, they still have to do the home study, but they say we're waiting since we've done all we can do and are just waiting on them to sign off on it. The home study process will usually take about a month, but there are a few other couples right along with us timewise, so it may not be as fast as it usually is. Other than that, we're just working on our scrapbook and baby room. My friend Leigh is painting a mural on the wall. I'll definitely post pictures as soon as she's done. It looks FANTASTIC! She's so talented! Other fun stuff...we went and registered at Target and Babies R Us the other day. We just put whatever we knew to get (or what we just wanted), so feel free to look at it and give us suggestions on what we need to add or take off....we've never done this before, so suggestions are welcomed.

Joe's Back, New Bern, and Adoption Updates...

We've been very busy the last few weeks, so sorry I haven't updated lately. Adoption update: we got our paperwork turned in on Dec. 4th. Whew! Then I got an email from the adoption worker saying they were missing one of the tests the doctors did on me. Come to find out, the doctor didn't DO the test on me. WONDERFUL! So yesterday I went up there, redid the test, and we'll have to wait a few days for the results. This delays the agency in sending out the referral letters.....which kind of in turn delays everything. Needless to say...I had a minor...well major..meltdown yesterday. Oh well....moving on. This Friday we have a "training" session with the agency. Don't really know what to expect from that....hopefully some insight on when the home study will start so we can get on that waiting list!

Check out some more new posts below...

New Bern at Christmas

We loved New Bern on our anniversary so much that we decided to go back. When we told the innkeepers they recommended coming back at Christmas time, to see the town decorated in Christmas attire. We took my parents and Joe's mom with us...Gran hurt her ankle so she couldn't go with us this time. We started the weekend visiting Tryon Palace, the first capital building of North Carolina. Then we went on a trolley tour, visiting the whole town and getting some history. Cyclops was there too...
We woke up the next morning to an AMAZING breakfast....



That day it rained all day long, but we braved it with our Aerie Inn umbrellas and toured the downtown shops, houses, and local firemans museum.

We had hoped to see the parade and floatilla (boat parade) so we again braved the FREEZING rainy weather and stood out by the river for about 45 minutes....never to see the parades.

We finished off the day with a trip to the Chelsea, a really nice restaurant in New Bern. We were so hungry and cold...we ate 4 baskets of rolls before they brought our food. The food was amazing, again!

The next morning we woke up to another wonderful breakfast. After breakfast we said our goodbyes to Michael and Marty, the innkeepers at Aerie Inn. EVERYONE SHOULD GO THERE! They are amazing! After a group photo, we hit the road back home....

He's back....

Joe's back from Mexico! Yay! He had an amazing, eye opening experience. He told lots of stories and showed lots of pictures. I don't want to try to write on his experiences...I'll see if I can get him to sit down and write a post about it sometime...