Christmas...The time of expectations

Our daughter's first Christmas...words that held a lot of expectation. She may have celebrated Christmas in the orphanage, but we will never know. She didn't have anything to bring from their, so it's safe to say she had never received any gifts. Christmas is a time of of family traditions, celebration, and laughter. Or at least that was my expectation. We tried to keep our gifts to a few, but I kept finding more and more things I just knew my daughter would love.

Here is how our Christmas went:
We went to church on Christmas Eve, just like we've always done. Our service was at 4:30, which is prime playtime for our child. So that is what she did. Laughed and played during the service. Not exactly the peaceful service I had pictured.

Then we went to Chinese for dinner. My family has always gone to a Chinese restaurant on Christmas Eve. It's an odd tradition, but I wanted to carry it on. All she ate was french fries.

All I wanted to do before she went to bed was read the Christmas story from Luke 2. She screamed so loud the entire time that Scott had to start over twice.

Christmas morning she was up bright and early at 6:30...the child who normally sleeps until 8. Scott went to get ready to video her reaction to the Little Tykes play set we built in the living room. She screamed because she wanted to go with Daddy, but I kept her in the bed room. The end of her temper tantrum is caught on video, and she just goes still when she sees the playground. Then promptly scoots back to her room to play with her beloved car.

Although everyone was excited for her to open her gifts she was overwhelmed by the attention, and mostly screamed when ripping open the paper. Then chose to play with the boxes and bags.

I am not saying all of this because we had a bad Christmas. We truly had a wonderful Christmas, and my heart was full just having my daughter here with us. I don't know that I could have endured another year without her stocking on the mantle. The expectations for Christmas were mine, not hers. She had a great time getting to know all her family better. She got lots of attention, was read lots of books, and received lots of love. And that is what mattered to her. Now we're slowly reintroducing some of her gifts, and she loves them. She plays everyday with her play set, and got brave enough to slide by herself today.

I learned that Christmas with an adopted child is best when expectations are set to the side. (Or maybe all children, but this is my first experience). Next year my goal is to just soak in the time with family, buy less toys, and check my expectations at the door.

Got to finally see the Sanjines family in the US!

Christmas in Virginia with the Hamilton Family

Christmas Eve...Our first nativity!

Christmas morning

 Christmas Day with the Dunton Family

Hiking with the family

Your Prayers are Working!

We received two important documents in this mail this week! God is so good to get these in before the holidays! First we received Scott's employer reference with the apostille (government certification). We've heard that CA can be picky about apostilling documents, so we feel very fortunate that ours worked the first time. Also, I've mentioned many times that we've been waiting for FBI clearance. I've been trying not to get my hopes up about getting the clearances before Christmas. When the government shut down they stopped processing fingerprints, so we knew they would be backed up. Normally the clearances take 6-8 weeks, and we just received ours today (only about 7 weeks)! So now we send those off to Washington, D.C. to get them apostilled by the federal government. Your prayers have been surely helping us!

The final document that we need prayers for is our I-797. We got more fingerprints done with the USCIS, and that is the last step before getting the I-797 clearance. We are hoping to get the document by the beginning of January.

Please also pray for our girl during this Christmas season. We have no idea if they do any type of celebration at the orphanage (it is a Catholic orphanage). Our main prayer is that she would have a full belly and know that her mommy and daddy love her. I won't be able to send anything to her until she is officially referred to us by the Colombian government.

My last bit of news is to save the date for February 8th. We are going to have an awesome Valentines Dinner fundraiser at our church (Momentum Eagles Landing). We are hosting a pick-a-prize auction, and will have childcare as well. The proceeds from this fundraiser will go towards our cost of travel to Colombia. Hopefully this will be our last fundraiser before going to get our girl! Please plan on coming to support us!

Merry Christmas from the Hamilton!

Projects

Since I am a teacher and I get a wonderfully long break this week is dedicated to projects. Yesterday our project was to de-Christmas the house. Our tree has been dead for about 2 weeks...so much for cutting down a nice Christmas tree. I've been terrified that it would catch on fire, so it had to go. We took down all the decor, drug the tree to the curb, and cleaned up in about 1.5 hrs.

Today I must finish thank-you notes from the wedding. I've been procrastinating way too long. I love my gifts, but I'm not so good with the note writing. After that is finished I've determined that I'm going to teach myself (and my husband) how to knit. I have decided that I must have a hobby that has a product. (The only other thing I do is read). I started the process last night, and I figured out how to cast on, but step two was a failure. By 12:30 I was very frustrated and gave up. We will see how today goes.

I have also set up my new sewing machine, but I can't decide what to make. I'm a beginner, but does anyone have any suggestions?

Our First Christmas Together

After searching long and hard to find an ornament that said something about "Our First Christmas", we ended up receiving 5. And they were all cuter than the one we found! It was truly a wonderful first Christmas as newlyweds, and it felt much like the wedding day in that it was over before I even knew it. We spent a wonderful few days celebrating Christmas in Virginia with Scott's family. Then when it was time to leave on Thursday our car would not start. (This is the fourth time we've had car trouble after driving to VA). We had it looked at, nothing was wrong, but we didn't leave until 7:00pm. After spending half of the night singing obnoxious Christmas carols in the car, we arrived home at 3:00am. I had one day to prepare for everyone coming to my house for Christmas, and we had church at 4:00. Somehow everything got done, and we fit everyone into our little house. We opened presents and ate dinner on our china plates (Thanks Jordyn!) in the living room. It was a fun time with the whole family, all topped off with a snowfall!