Post Christmas and the New Year

Okay, so if I was a good blogger I would have added probably five posts in the time between this post and the previous post, but I am not a good blogger.  On the upside anyone reading to follow the adoption hasn't missed anything because there is nothing to report.  Our paperwork is updated and everything is now in the unending holding pattern that we seem to be in.  On an upbeat note, we bought a snowsuit for our Baby G in the hope that we get to travel before winter is up.  We have been putting off buying one because we won't need it if we travel in the summer months.  Here's hope.  

Thanksgiving came and went without much to speak of.  I fixed the turkey for Jeff's family's Thanksgiving.  I have a family recipe that I use and my mother-in-law knew it.  However, she misinterpreted it to be a GERMAN family recipe (I am a good deal German, my mother was a Juedemann and my father is a Wehmeyer)  I had everyone asking me how I "made a German turkey, did I stuff it with saurkraut?"  After clearing that up everyone seemed to really like the turkey, the white meat was so juicy.  I would pass along the recipe, but then I would have to kill you!!  LOL!  After Thanksgiving everything switched into high gear and I was off to the races gearing up for Christmas.  

Christmas...Was fun, nice, full.  We did not spend our time sad over the fact that one more Christmas has gone by without our Baby G.  Instead we looked forward  to the hope that next year we would share our love, traditions and excitement with our little one.  We went to our usual Christmas tree farm to get a tree and it was pretty slim pickings, but we decided that we would rather have a crooked bare tree (it wasn't Charlie Brown bare) and support our local tree farm to ensure that it will be there to share with our little one than to go find a perfect tree at a tree lot.  So our tree leaned a little, but it had character!  For Christmas every year I get an ornament for our tree for both Jeff and I that I think is representative of our year.  This year's was a Hallmark ornament shaped like a tear drop with a clear star hanging in the middle and the town of Bethlehem nestled in the bottom, but it was the words that were on it and the box that really won me over.  Inscribed on the ornament was the phrase, "Hope shines bright."  On the box was written:

"The world was dark, a place of uncertainty, waiting for an unknown future.  But in the extraordinary glow of the star over Bethlehem, heralding the arrival of the Light of the World, hope shines bright, as the future is forever changed."

Thank God for Christmas and the hope that it gives to this world through Jesus, but also for those that are one this journey of adoption along with us, thank God that hope shines bright and that someday we will have our own small Christmas miracle that will change our futures forever! 

Happy New Year!