November’s gone?

Already???? It’s December? December 10th? What happened? This is the question I am starting to hear most often. What is going on in your household? Why haven’t you written?

There are several answers. The first revolves around the loss of our digital camera. I can’t seem to remember all the fun little things we’ve done without the accompanying photo essays. The Nikon D 70 (which we love) died at Jamin’s homecoming game. You may wonder how a homeschool student has a homecoming game…isn’t every day homecoming and aren’t most days game days at our house???? Jamin had a blast playing for TLC this year and the homecoming was a heady experience for a homeschool freshman. The crowds roared. He played most the game, they let the freshmen and sophomores carry the game and they won handily. The camera, however, quit working!!! We quickly sent it off to NYC as it was still under warranty. Three weeks later I called and the camera was at Nikon getting fixed. Two weeks later I called and it was back in Amityville, NY. I was then told it had been mailed out to us one day mail. Mike was TDY at this point and in the hustle of welcoming him back home I forgot to watch the mail box. Hmm….it’s been 5 days and WHERE is the Nikon? Called Cameta Cameras back and it HAD been delivered! WHERE? In Alaska!!! The customer service had NOT updated our account as they told Mike they did. UPS was given a day to try to retrieve our camera from the current residents of our old home. They did. They shipped it 2 day air back to NY, now it’s been mailed out again – this time to TX. We miss our camera. Yes, we do have a “regular” Nikon but it isn’t the same!

The other reason you haven’t heard much from us is that we’ve entered our “Birthday Season”. This begins with Mike on 17 Nov and progresses through Christmas, Birthdays (Jared, De’Etta, Nolan, Josiah, Zander, and Jamin) and an anniversary. We come up to breathe again in March.

Mike’s birthday was a hoot. We all went together and got him a surround sound system. He was totally shocked!

We fit a camping trip in. I will try to write more about this when we get the pictures back (which will be sometime after I deliver them to be developed ). We searched for water and found it…..under the shadow of a Power Plant which didn’t show up on the state maps. The campground was very empty and we had a wonderful time. We even got to dialogue with the Park manager about careers in the Parks dept.

The night after returning from camping found Mike at Mr. Gatti’s with the 7 children from home while I hosted a tea for the Staff Spouses/females from the Chapel. This was a fun night and gave me the opportunity to use my new china set for the first time.

Thanksgiving was full and fun. We had a few students from the Intel school over and a family from the chapel staff as well. We missed the girls but took comfort in the fact that they were spending the day together at Bre’s host home. We continued the “sign the tablecloth” tradition. Arielle had gotten all the signatures stitched from last year finished Wed. night. She was relieved to hear that instead of 50 we were having 30 people this year – much easier to stitch.

Josiah is directing the chapel’s Christmas Program this year. From all accounts he is doing a great job. We’ll see the results tomorrow. Jamin will be a reporter, Arielle and angel and Nolan a shepherd.

The younger ones and I enjoyed a field trip out to our local Christmas Tree farm. We have a seedling to plant and are hoping to be able to use it for our last Christmas here.

We are once again enjoying our Advent schedule. We are reading *Bartholomew’s Passage* this year and loving it. We also have a Jesse Tree and ornaments with names of Christ that we hang on the tree.

Yes, the tree…this year we decorated solely with picture ornaments. We have these of the children for each year. We love the tree. It’s simple and meaningful.

Josiah and Jamin directed the outdoor decorations this year. They had a vision – and what a bright and cherry vision it is. I hope to get a picture up. We realized in November that we had purchased a home on Christmas Lane. We’ve had steady traffic each night since Thanksgiving. We have lights and then took all the other yard signs out of the yard…leaving a simple, white wooden nativity cut out and a yard sign that says “Jesus” Celebrate His Birth. We have a spot light shining on it. Mike and I are very happy with the way the yard turned out.

We have continued on with school and are about ½ way through our second unit of the year. We will begin our school break on 16 Dec and resume school on 2 January.

We have all visited a new dentist….only one cavity among us. Josiah has been fitted for a night guard…the hopes is this will help his jaw to relax. He has quite a case of lock jaw.

Nolan has finally been approved for speech therapy. We will be seeing W TX Rehab this next week to set up a plan.

We’ve discovered online shopping this year. Wowee!!! We’ve been able to find everything we want, usually with free shipping, discounted prices and NO 8 ½% sales taxes. We’re still new enough to this that it is totally exciting each day when the UPS, Fed EX or USPS trucks pull up.

Ah, we’ve also been busy making gifts but I can’t share about those quite yet.

That’s where our November has gone. I do hope to keep up better than this, maybe even be able to begin sharing thoughts, feelings and insights and not simple narrative…..

Today is a Ladies Tea – I’m involved in planning, organizing, setting up and hosting it – so I’d best get moving.

The girls and my parents arrive here on 21 Dec. We are counting the days!

I won’t wish you a Merry Christmas yet because I’ll be sure to write again before Christmas. In fact, as soon as the D 70 arrives I’ll need to take pictures of Stacia….and when I get the film developed I’ll have lots of pictures to post.