Christmas II

I love my new baby

Thank you Aunt Jessica

Happy Birthday Jesus!

Merry Christmas! We have been busy elves the last few days preparing for the Birth of Our Savior Jesus by helping to spread His love through our Chapel ministry Operation Cookie Drop. We baked cookies and help to stuff stocking for our unaccompanied and deployed active duty members and the national staff here on base. (Pics to above) We attended a beautiful Christmas Eve service last night, I think our best since moving here and ate our traditional Christmas Eve meal of Chinese food. Stateside, it would be take-out, but here it was the homemade version. This morning the kids woke Dad as the 12 Drummers Drumming (Dad's final gift of his 12 days of Christmas) at 6:45 a.m. As the morning progressed we opened gifts, ate our traditional Christmas breakfast casserole while we discussed our Greatest Gift- JESUS. Finally, we enjoyed a lazy afternoon opening boxes. Turkey dinner and birthday cake round out the evening. Joy has enjoyed her first Christmas and we count her addition to our family as our greatest present this year. To all our family and friends scattered throughout the world- We wish you the love of the Lord on this special day. Merry Christmas!

We can't wait!!

A little overwhelming perhaps!

Our knight in shining armor!

Special Olympics Run

Matthew, Grace and Dad participated in a 10 mile run (bike ride) to benefit the Special Olympics
of New Jersey. Mom, Joy and Andrew cheered on the side lines.

Olympic Torch

Look at me! I'm so cute!
Joy is doing great. We have recently discovered she loves to dance. She also adores any kind of stuffed animal and would prefer to take them everywhere we go. She is doing much better with her eating and enjoys almost everything. She is still not too fond of fruits, but eats applesauce so I guess that counts. Several nights this week we have taken the kids out to look at Christmas lights and Joy can be heard in the back saying "OOhooooooo". She listens very well and hasn't attempted to pull down the Christmas tree yet. Sorry for the gaps in posting, our duties as part of the permanent goodbye committee (position obtained by default as we have lived her so long!) have kept us busy. Our dear friends the Muellers departed on their way to Japan. You will be dearly missed and we wish you God's blessings!!

Around Town

Yes are are enjoying our cool weather in the mid 80's

This is the ferry we take to get from Windward (live on) to Leeward (airport)

Sunsets are gorgeous this time of year

Grace our angel on the Chapel Christmas float

Mary and Baby Jesus (aka Brooke)

MOM! Look what Dad and I caught!

We decided to play hookie on Friday as it was our last day with some dear friends. It was a beautiful day and Joy had a ball. She especially enjoyed trying to eat the sand!

I know what saying- What about Thanksgiving? We have so much to be thankful for this year we weren't even able to put it into words. Our adoption journey is at its end and we now have Joy in our arms. Our hearts cry out to God for His unending blessings and timing. We now know without a doubt why we waited so long for our daughter; the Lord had picked Joy for our family. She is sassy, outgoing, stubborn at times and just down right cute as pie!! Our thanfulness also goes out to our many family and friends who have blessed us in so many ways over the last few years. You each helped to bring our little girl home in one way or another. We can never express in words what our hearts feel for each one of you.
Now, to the pictures- We set up our Christmas tree on Saturday which always concludes with a cup of hot cocoa with marshmellows. Yes- hot cocoa in 90 degree weather!! We can not break tradition. We followed up our decorating with our base traditional tree lighting complete with a special guest. Fun was had by all!

Preparing for Christmas