Happy Christmas Day!

What a wonderful day as we celebrated Jesus' birthday. Gracee marked her second Christmas at home! And this year she was much more engaged in the affairs of the day than her Christmas 2005. She might not want to get any where near Santa-in-person at the mall, but she was very pleased with her gifts--particularly her Elmo shirt, Elmo outfit, and ride-on Zebra toy. We are so grateful to be a family. God has truly blessed us. We stayed up way too late Christmas Eve watching old videos when the kids were little (or not even born.) So late that Santa was very delayed in completing his rounds at our house. Yet he persevered and everything was thrilled to be up the next morning to hear the Gospel story of Jesus' birth and then await Dad's "Ho, Ho, Ho. Merry Christmas" as the signal to head down the hall to the tree. [Grace was not at all pleased to hear Dad's traditional "Ho, Ho." holler and went back down the hall to Mom's arms.] Convinced that 'Santa' really wasn't in the den waiting for her, Gracee joined her brothers and sister to see what Santa had brought. She was very pleased to discover candy in her stocking. By the end of the day, most of her candy was gone and Gracee had resorted to checking out the contents of everyone else's stockings. Watching the videos reminded us both how quickly time moves on and how special it is to be a Mom and Dad. As we look forward to bringing our newest son or daughter home in the future, we are already praying for that child who may well already be in an orphanage in China. While we are praying for the day to be sooner than later and for the finances to be in place, we are confident that God is well aware of this situation. We take comfort in the fact that He is in control. He who gave the gift of His own Son to atone for our failures and to rebuild our broken relationship, is more than able to meet our every need. To God be the glory!