I’ve been an awful blogger. Honestly, life has just been crazy, busy crazy, not bad crazy. We’re still recovering.

Things with our adoption are going well. Our dossier has been registered. There are still a few additional documents we’d like to submit to help with our case and those are almost ready to go. We hope to have a court day at the end of January, but we won’t know for a couple more weeks.

Christmas, was, um, okay. We chose not to do presents this year. We asked others not to give R&L presents as well. We wanted to take the opportunity to teach them about Christmas, and make it more than gifts. I had lots of great ideas of how to make Christmas special. Then, I got sick. So, we ended up having a big dinner and reading lots of books about Christmas and that was about it.

Well, and we skyped with my family. My family has a gag gift tradition. The idea is that you spend as little as you can (preferably nothing) and come up with a gift that will make the other person laugh. It all started because my dad is notorious for gifting people ridiculous things. One year, it was duck sauce, because my sister had said months before that she really wanted some duck sauce. Another time, it was a cabbage… not sure why. After we all laughed so hard over the cabbage, we decided this needed to be a regular tradition.

We *almost* didn’t do it this year. It can be work for those of in charge of coming up with the gifts. Normally, each person has one other person, kids included, and that means for those of us with kids, we have to come up with gifts from each person in our family.  This year, we paired everyone up… so it was Aaron & I and Reed & Lena. Aaron and I had my sister & her husband and they had us. My kids had my sister’s younger three kids, and my other sister had R&L.

My sister made us a really cute “weimaraner rescue” poster with details about all of the “dogs” in need of homes… each of her kids. We made them a “People of Walmart” spoof, with their faces photoshopped on the photos. I’d show it to you, but I value my life too much.

This is what my sister gave R&L. She made a big print and framed it. They’re begging me to hang it up in their room.

This is what Reed and Lena made for their cousins. If you haven’t seen Kittens Inspired by Kittens, you should watch it first.

I felt like I should share some more Reed and Lena photos since I’ve been such an awful blogger, but I haven’t taken many recently! Ooops.

This is actually from before Thanksgiving, but how cute is she, shopping at Target?

I was so proud of this (feel free to laugh at me). Reed drew this on 12/19. I should find a photo of what he was drawing on 12/19 last year, but let’s just say, he has come SO FAR and I am really impressed with him. This kid loves to create and he has lots of creativity.

When Lena has her weekly speech therapy, we hang out in this office. Reed plays with cowboy(left) and Reed. That little character in the overalls is ALWAYS “cowboy” and it cracks me up every time. And, yes, Reed’s hair almost always looks like this, especially if he got his hair washed the day before. And I don’t care.

One last thing… you should all have your superman shirts by now. Can you send me a photo of yourself in it, if you are okay with that? I’d love to collect them for Helen. I’d love to post them on the blog too, if you are okay with that, but I’ll still take them even if that is not okay, to save just for her. Let me know!

Example:

I was very fortunate to find this photo of people wearing the same shirt, who look ridiculously like me. Thank you, Google.