Merry Christmas!

Hope this finds you having a good week and staying warm! We are looking forward to a week full of Christmas and my brother's wedding events. Samuel and I survived a week long bout with the flu and are finally doing better.

We also applied for Samuel's Social Security card :). I have a whole new appreciation for government offices here. Despite clearly not being used to doing adoption social security card applications, the SS office people were nice and friendly. I brought every official adoption document with me because I am programmed to be prepared for the worst. It paid off because they said we would just need the certificate of citizenship, but they ended up asking for his birth certificate, the translation, my passport, his passport and my driver's license!

Last weekend and this weekend we celebrated Jimmy's 30th birthday. He turned 30 yesterday, but I had a little surprise birthday dinner for him last week. He was very surprised which was fun! It was a great night, but it was definitely a moment of realizing that we're in a new stage of life. Most of the guests left by 9:30 because of kids' bedtimes- there goes the social life!

Jimmy with his ice cream birthday cake :)

Samuel helping Jimmy open presents this weekend

Not much else to report from here.... we have a squirrel living in our attic. Jimmy had to climb up there today and set up a squirrel trap. Not sure if a squirrel is better or worse than the monster sized mouse I was envisioning??

Also- my computer crashed yesterday.... the "blue screen of death", as Jimmy calls it. I'm hoping we have most of it backed up or that Best Buy can salvage something. I think it died from all of the dust and mold in Antigua. I can't get too upset about it- pretty much a miracle it made it home from Antigua. I think three of my Antigua friends all had laptops die during our time in Guatemala.

Oh- one more piece of news! I have a very small part time job for next semester! I interviewed to teach Spanish at Longview community college and haven't heard if they'll need me yet. In the meantime, I got a call from another branch of the community college to teach a night class called Occupational Spanish. I'm really excited about it! It's just one night a week, so it isn't much time (or much $$... guess that's how it works!), but I'm looking forward to it.

Hope you all have a very Merry Christmas! It will be an extra special one for us since it's Samuel's first Christmas at home! Having him around has made me think more about the miracle of Jesus' birth. Just makes me wonder what Jesus' personality was like at 16 months.... wonder if His diapers smelled as bad as Samuel's or if He liked to dance with his pointer fingers in the air? :)

And just for fun.... a picture from Samuel's first Christmas! We had flown down to Guatemala on Christmas day to be with him for a few days....