Our Week in Review

I've been a bit of a blogger slacker this week....I've been crazy busy trying to get ready to spend the holidays here at home this year. This will be the first Christmas in my 27 years that I will not spend it with my family. I'm both sad and excited. I'm looking forward to doing all the fun traditions I did as a kid with my kids, but I'll also miss my parents and siblings. At Vanderbilt, you either work the week of Christmas or the week of New Year's. Daniel has been fortunate to get Christmas off the past 2 years, so when his chief resident called and asked him to please work Christmas, he felt he should comply. He was rewarded with an extra day off over New Year's, but we decided to spend that week at home as well.

I have tried to ease my sadness of not being home for Christmas by trying to carry on one of our family traditions with my friends. Last week, I realized I was a week behind with the German tradition of lighting the advent, singing carols, and eating cookies starting 4 Sunday's before Christmas. So I got a small group together and we met at Kathy's to sing. It was really fun, and really helped me to not miss home so much. I decided to do it again this week, except at my house, and I found myself inviting just about everyone I ran into at church. We ended up with about 30 people and it was so much fun! My favorite carol last night was "Little Drummer Boy." It seemed like everyone joined in on that one and it sounded so beautiful. The treats were pretty good as well...I think the hi-lite was the homemade donuts! Thanks Amber!

I decided this year to get a real tree since we would spend Christmas here. I got a little selfish and decided to have a "pretty" tree, so I decorated it myself. My mom made me feel a little guilty about that, so I ended up setting up our tiny 6 foot tree with multi-colored lights for the kids to decorate. They really enjoyed it and took great pride in their work. I was really impressed with their ability to spread out the decorations (well, except for Addi, so Tristan and Alicia would come along behind her to spread them out). I was grateful my mom helped me to see the light!

my tree

their tree

December 9th was the 3 year anniversary of Tristan and Alicia's adoption. I roasted a 5 lb chicken, made mashed potatos, peas, gravy, and rolls. Unfortunately, the anticipation of celebrations can kind of stress my kids out, so the celebration was a bit of a dud. One of them just really had a bad day that day. So, I decided to try again on Wednesday! This time I tried a Chinese theme. My Chinese friend, Kathy, helped me make singapore rice noodles; then I made fried chicken wings seasoned with 5-spice. I also made rice, asparagus (not really chinese), and a ceasar salad (really not Chinese) that I meant to use the night before, but got a little distracted. Daniel made a chocolate cake and put 3 candles on it. We sang "Happy Adoption Day to us" to the tune of "Happy Birthday" and blew out the candles together. We talked about some of our favorite memories of the kids...the good times, and also some of the funny, dramatic stories from the first few months they lived with us. They actually love it when we tell those stories. I think because they think they are so much more grown up now...which they are! We are so grateful that we are a family and grateful that we were able to find each other.