Friday, January 02, 2009

catching up

I am finally able to share some of the things that happened before Thanksgiving. I know I shared a bit about my father-in-law's 80th birthday party, but I thought you might enjoy some of the videos. Don was completely surprised. He thought he was attending a kid performance at our church. He walked into a room with 100 people from every walk of his life - church, hospital volunteer, and family and friends.

There was BBQ - chicken, pulled pork, and ribs - and all the fixings along with plenty of iced tea. That food just seemed perfect for a man who is so pleasant and easy-going. Dave arranged for a women's accapella quartet to come and serenade Don as part of the evening's entertainment. Their name was Soundworks and they were awesome. In the following video the quartet calls Don up to be with them. Don, with his wicked sense of humor, decides to ham it up by hobbling up there like an old man. Funny thing is that he moves better than most 40 year olds. This is the video of "Ain't he sweet" where they fight over Don:



More videos can be found here from the party.

Thursday, January 01, 2009

happy 2009!

We celebrated new year's eve quietly around our casa. Jordan had an all important "lock-in" with her church youth group so that left us with only William and Grace for dinner. After convincing the two littles that they lacked one more year before they were qualified to do midnight duty on new year's eve (horrible, aren't we?!?) we cozied up to watch a recorded episode of "Heroes" and then later kissed hello to 2009 at our bedtime. I know you are astounded by our domestication. Ah, it was nice to have a quiet night with no plans. What used to be a tragedy is now our idea of paradise. ;-)

Dave took doughnuts to the church building this morning for the crowd and then collected a tired Jordan who had stayed up until 5:30 am. Apparently she was on of the first to go to sleep this morning. Needless to say, our youth minister will need a nap. My husband so thoughtfully got silver dollars for each child's shoe and so they were introduced to a little tradition he grew up with in his household. We then rolled everyone out for a midday movie. We saw Bedtime Stories and loved it. Now it's on to a holiday feast of Fajitas, Guacamole, and Black-eyed peas.

I stopped doing resolutions a long time ago. For me they were fruitless. This past year has been a milestone one for me. 2008 was the year I finally began to figure out how to recover from the last birth. In all ways - mentally, physically, and spiritually. I feel so much more hopeful this January than last. A lot of it has to do with the diagnosis of identifiable things I could do to get my body's organs back to some kind of normal. Honestly last January I felt hopeless. I was hanging on by a spiritual thread and that was it. So this year I am just going to keep doing the things that are working...only do them better. I'm just going to keep hoping that our family grows in love and take action to make that happen. I'm just going to keep sharing what I've learned along the way with those who feel hopeless. And I'm going to open myself up to the situations that God places in my life.

I wish the same for you. Happy 2009!