Winter break, referral announcement (a little late) and welcoming in 2008!

The kids have been on their two week winter break, so I've been busy...well, distracted is a better word. We took them up to the snow for four days to start break off right. It was such a fun trip. We went with our very good friends, Mike and Lezlie Pachesky and their two children, Mason and Emma. I skied for the first time in years. Jacob snowboarded for the first time ever and did amazing. Benjamin snowboarded the first day, sledded the second and skied the third. He did great as well. Doug skied..he's a great skier..always has been. We are really hoping to get the kids on the slopes again before all the snow melts away...since we live in Arizona, that could happen rather quickly. Throughout the whole trip we kept talking about how "next year things will be a lot different". "We will have our little sugar plum and someone is going to have to hang out in the lodge at all times." "We won't all be able to squeeze into one car to go out to eat because the little princess's car seat will be taking up too much room." Stuff like that. It's fun to imagine her with us when we do fun things like this. It's amazing to me how, even our friends, think about her during this wait. She is so loved already!

We returned from our trip tired, but happy and all in one piece. The rest of the break has been spent sleeping in (one of our favorite things to do), going to movies, a few slumber parties, late nights in the jacuzzi..stuff like that. I was in the mood one night to do something "chinese", so the four of us headed on over to the Chinese Cultural Center for dinner. The food was great, and after we ate we browsed through the Asian grocery store. There's nothing funnier than watching the boys freak out over some of the seafood they sell there!!!

Then, on New Years Eve, I happened to hop on line to check my email and wouldn't you know it....referrals had come in!! They were at least a week earlier than anyone expected. They matched families with log in dates of 12/15/05 thru 12/19/05. Although my heart had a surge of excitement for the families who received their referrals, seeing a batch this small felt like a punch in the stomach. Something else about this batch that was rather unique was that the children who were referred were older than we usually see. For our agency, of the 6 families who received referrals (all of which were logged in on 12/19), 5 of them received children older than the age they had requested. In fact, one family who is from Arizona, received a referral for a 4 year old little girl. They had requested a child 0-12 months old. It was interesting to see...we will have to WAIT to see if this going to become a new trend. I kind of doubt it, but you never know. We probably won't see another batch of referrals until the first week of February. After that the CCAA will break for the Chinese New Year (Feb 7th).

Anyway, here we are in 2008! Maybe this will be our year! We will just have to WAIT and see!!