Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all of you, and best wishes for a great 2009. Thank you to all of you for your support and friendship throughout the craziness of 2008, and my very best thoughts and prayers and thankfulness to those of you who have shared your journeys with me throughout the last year. To those of you who brought your kiddos home this year, my prayers for a very happy 2009 together and houses full of laughter, joy, and blessings. To those of us who are still waiting and for whom 2009 is going to be "the year", I ask for God to stay close to us on this journey, giving us encouragement and peace and the reminders day to day that this is going to happen for us. My love to all of you!

No, I have not fallen off the planet...

Ok, it has been way too long since I caught everybody up with what is going on. I profoundly apologize, but in my defense it has been a really busy month here. In this post, I’ll try to fill you in on the Thanksgiving in NY experience. Perhaps I will be caught up with everything some time in January! Thank you to all of you who have been checking up on me...I AM ok, I am following your blogs, and I'm so glad for all of you who have brought home kiddos, especially Kim and Jackie. We're still in the game, but I'll catch you up on that stuff later.

The last post I made was about getting ready to head out for New York at Thanksgiving. Short summary—it was a really LONG trip, but it was a fun week. We met Laurel and Kirt and the girls on the way out to Buffalo (in Pocahontas, IL of all places! If you’ve never been there, make sure you visit it and have brunch at the Powhatan Restaurant.) and caravanned out there in one day.

The next morning (Wednesday) we got up and drove from Buffalo into NYC. On Thanksgiving Day we got up early and walked from the apartment we were renting down to Central Park West, where we watched the Macy’s Parade. It was very cool just being there and seeing all the people, and I understand now why they have the balloons---if you’re on the street and not in the first two or three rows, the balloons are basically all you see!

But they are HUMONGOUS!

After the parade and Santa Claus, we walked down to Times Square (after lunch at a deli where we had amazing cheesecake)

The gang near Times Square—yeah, we look like tourists!

and then explored lower Manhattan. We did Rockefeller Center, the Empire State Building, Battery Park, and ended up in China Town for dinner—like in the “Christmas Story” movie.

Amber’s Pineapple Chicken---she was pretty surprised!

The next morning we were up and on our way back to Buffalo. That evening we had dinner and crashed (and Sarah and Steve worked on her guitar skills), and then got up on Saturday and fixed Thanksgiving Dinner. It was a joint effort (but mostly Laurel and Sarah, although I made the pilgrimage to the grocery store), and pretty amazing. That evening we drove up to the falls, where we basically had the whole park to ourselves. Quiet, except for the sound of all that water, and cold, but not so bad that it was uncomfortable to walk around. Very cool and peaceful, especially with the colored lights on the falls.

The “girls” at Niagara Falls

We headed back home on Sunday after going to church with Jeremiah…we were doing great until we hit really crappy traffic outside Cleveland…and when we got to Illinois around midnight decided we probably needed to stop and spend the night—so it was Monday when we made it home. Luckily, I had already told my class that I probably wouldn’t be there that night, so they got a night off and I could come home and crash. It made everyone happy--and I don't think they missed too much!

(By the way---finals went well, and I ended up with a bunch of students who had great grades for the class---I was really proud of them, and it was fun doing Russian history with them).

There’s more to tell about what’s going on with the adoption, and us, and Christmas but I’ll save that for the next post…

Best wishes for an amazing New Year for all of you--