Happy New Year!

I hope that all of my family and friends had a wonderful Christmas holiday and a wonderful New Year!

Just a quick update...the boys both had a fabulous Christmas! Their hamster, HamHam, also called Chuggles, Chug-Chug, or whatever name they decided to call her, passed away on Christmas Eve eve. It was a very sad realization for both Jeremy and Shelby. Santa brought HamHam and Stripey two years ago on Christmas. Stripey passed away some time ago. HamHam had just gotten to be old in hamster years. It was a sad night, the three of us cried and cried. Along with the tears came some difficult questions: "Why does God make things die?" "Why does dying have to be a part of living?" There's a lesson in every event.

We are now the owners of two adorable guinea pigs: Calico Jack and BlackJack. They are the cutest things, much easier to handle than the hamster, and talk about SQUEAKY! The boys have done an excellent job of caring for the guineas....when I checked the cage, I noticed that the food bowl had been filled and Jeremy pleasantly filled the water bottle when I asked him to. We are going to Walmart this weekend to buy some bedding, the boys will cage out the cage themselves (well, I'll supervise). I told them they would have to be responsible for the care of their new pets.

Christmas morning brought squeals of delight from both boys. They were so eager to open their gifts. It was funny, they both slept past 8:00 and we had to wake them up....Shelby and Jeremy both looked sort of dumbfounded, but then they quickly realized what was going on.


We left Thursday morning on a long weekend vacation. David usually takes off the week after Christmas. We decided to trek to Western North Carolina. We visited the Museum of the Cherokee Indian in Cherokee, took a trip aboard the Great Smoky Mountains Railway, toured Biltmore House, and visited the New World of Coke in Atlanta. We arrived home on New Year's Eve.

The one thing that was missing, for me anyway, was my baby girl. Somewhere out there, halfway around the world, is a baby with almond eyes, jet black hair, and olive skin waiting for me to be her mom. I want to see her, hold her, kiss her cheeks and stroke her hair. I miss her. She was definitely remembered this Christmas...Santa brought her a Barbie, Aunt Lisa gave her an Asian panda, and Aunt Robyn included her in our "first annual" family yearbook. I wonder if this new year will bring her home...when...before or after the Olympics, will it be closer to Christmas, or could it even be another year? It's so hard to live in the moment when such a life-changing event for Kaelie, me, all of us, is looming ever closer, yet even further away. It's so hard to believe that we started this journey nearly three years ago, and we haven't seen it to fruition.