Miss Lauryn!
That's it picture-wise for now.
This week has flown by! Thank you for all your prayers, thoughts, and phone calls about Alex. After his surgery he was a little grumpy but is now completely fine. It's nice to see him respond to my voice and to know that he can hear me! Now we just need to work on the responding when you're being spoken to thing. He's good at ignoring me.
Thursday night was so much fun! Chris won an IPod Shuffle and the kids had a blast with Kate, Heath, and Carter. We have such good friends here! Chris and I really did need our time together. It was great to be able to complete a conversation without being interrupted by a screaming child, or a child crawling on top of one of us, or one child hurting the other. We really do need more of those evenings to how much we love each other. :) The party itself wasn't a ton of fun, but spending time with Chris was, and that made it worth it.
Friday night was great as well! We thoroughly enjoyed spending time with friends. Chris was part of a quartet that performed and we have not stopped hearing compliments on his voice. Again, it was great to get to spend time sans children where we could complete thoughts -- not to mention have entire conversations! Kathy stayed with the kids at our house and has no idea how much we appreciate her having volunteered to do so!
Saturday night Kathy must really have been looking for torture because she volunteered to keep our kids that night as well. We went to a "A World of Christmas" at Creekside Christian Church. It was such a great experience. They had 3 life size areas set up that looked like a village from Germany, Ghana, and Mexico and at each place they talked about Christmas in that country. Afterwards they had a musical/drama in which a friend of Chris' from work was singing. It was really good! I was very impressed with how well they did. The story focused around a boy that had lost both of his parents. It got Chris and I talking on the way home. Something we had discussed but not set in stone before was what would happen to our children if something were to happen to us, or to happen to one of us while the other couldn't immediately be there. (Like I end up in the hospital or worse while Chris is overseas.) We finally made a plan. The biggest part of that plan is that we have asked Micah to be they're godfather. We're going to draw up legal documents that give him full parental rights should something happen to both of us or to one of us while the other is unavailable. We completely trust his judgement to make good decisions for our children and to make sure that they are brought up in a Christian home -- whether that means that he be the person that cares for them, or simply places them in someone else's home until he feels that he can care for them, we know that he would make the best judgement call. And he wouldn't care about offending someone in our family when it came to putting the needs of our kids above all else. It was so hard to pick someone, because there are soooo many people in our family that I know would open up their homes to our kids. And we are going to talk to Micah more in depth later about the decision and who else we would want considered if he felt that he couldn't keep them himself. But if definitely feels good to know that we have a plan in place and are going to make it as well-documented and legal as possible so that there are no "Oh dear, what do we do now?" if that situation ever occured. Just as a side-note, we're also asking a couple here in Jax to take care of them should anything happen until Micah could arrive and make arrangements for the kids. They will also have (limited) custodial rights to care for the little ones. They will help Micah make the decision as they know our children so well as they live here and see them every week.
Yesterday the kids had fun at the Children's Christmas Party at church! Kairi spent most of the day coloring her Christmas card for the elderly at Avante Nursing Home (where our church ministers) and didn't even notice Santa. We were a little nervous about the party since Santa was going to be there since we aren't "doing" Santa. (The kids will still recieve presents, they just will always know that they're from us. But don't worry, I won't allow them to ruin your child's Santa fun.) But since Alex is too young for it to matter and Kairi had no clue that Santa was even in the room, it wasn't a problem! Instead, after he left I took my kids aside and gave them presents from Chris and I. We all really enjoyed ourselves. But I left my camera there, so until I get it back, you'll have to go without new pictures!
I hope you all have a great day today!
