Counting down to Christmas

Hard to believe it's just about 10 days to Christmas! Both girls are very excited. The other day Bethany told me on the phone that Santa was coming down the chimney and he has a big tummy, "just like BaBa!!" We have a gorgeous tree (only one pet-related mishap so far) and Charlie has done his usual wonderful job decorating the yard. We always have the prettiest house on the street at Christmas.

Last night was Bethany's Christmas program at school. Each preschool class sang a couple of songs and recited Bible verses. Bethany's teacher told us she did very well in memorizing everything and she certainly wasn't scared about being in front of a crowd (she waved and blew kisses to us several times). One of the songs required the kids to count to 10 several times and she was the loudest of all, making the audience laugh.

Bethany was so excited this week to talk to her friend Harrison on the phone again. They really have an amazing bond. The look of her face when they talk is hard to describe. She has learned to write her name and we mailed him off a card this week from her, which included a picture of her for him to keep. We were also excited recently to get an email from a family in The Netherlands. They adopted Annie's best friend. We have pictures of this little girl and had known she was being adopted at the same time we adopted Annie, but we didn't know where her family was. It's such a gift for both our girls to have contact with the other children who were so important in their lives. We already know of two families that have adopted close friends of Jack and hope we can keep in contact with them also.

Speaking of pictures, here are a couple more from the photo session a few weeks ago.

We finally got Jack's care package mailed off this week. It goes to the wonderful, Kathy, our agency rep, in Beijing first and she will translate the letters and mail it off to Hefei. So he should have it in 3 weeks or so. We sent him a Spiderman t-shirt, some toy cars, and the special Ultraman Jack action figure. We also sent a LA baseball cap for his foster dad, some fancy soap to his foster mom and a puzzle, stickers, toy cars and fruit snacks for the other kids in his home. And of course, we sent a picture album of all of us, the house and some postcards of Portland. There is a great website called Babelfish where you can type in any word or phrase and get a translation in any language. I made captions for all the photos in both English and Chinese ("Your sister Annie...etc"). It's cool to imagine Jack getting this package and knowing he finally has a family of his own!