Well, fall fell hard around these parts last week and ushered in winter a little sooner than we would have liked. An early winter storm dropped 6-7" of snow on us on 11/20/15. Thankfully, the temps warmed up the next couple of days and precipitation turned back into rain and now most of the snow is gone!
This time of year we enjoy taking the opportunities that our community provides for various cultural and arts events - concerts and plays and other things like that. I have always wanted to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra in concert and this year Kevin bought us tickets to go so we enjoyed that event last week, too!
This week we celebrated Thanksgiving with family and friends. On Thanksgiving Day we visited with some friends who became family to me over twenty years ago. They loved me and welcomed me into their family (which now numbers well over 50 in just 3 generations!) and, when we married, Kevin also become just another one of the family.
On Friday we did just a little bit of shopping but mostly we just went to the pet store for a few of their sales on our essential pet items (cat litter, cat food, Greenies for Jack and a new toy and sweater for Jack) and then we went downtown to see Disney on Ice: Dare to Dream as another of our Thanksgiving traditions. It was a great show! I've seen several of them over the years and this one is way up on the list as one of my favorites.
Today, my mom and brother came over to 'do Thanksgiving' with us. Instead of doing a big meal (since we all had fairly big meals on Thursday) we just had some small finger foods and snack items while we watched Christmas movies. I'll plan to do the whole turkey and noodles and stuff on Christmas this year for all of us.
We have had some opportunities this fall for our profile to be presented to expectant families who are considering placing their babies for adoption. We have been presented 5 times and all 5 times other families were chosen. Each time gets a little bit harder to be told 'no' but we continue pressing forward - waiting and praying for the child(ren) that will one day be ours.
This holiday season seems different from previous years. Even though we are adults now we do still make "Christmas Lists" for our families with whom we exchange gifts. In years past we have always had a few things that we would really like to have, which someone else could actually buy for us. This year, these things are eluding us as the one thing that we both so desperately want cannot be bought. We feel humbled and even a little bit guilty that the things we we want most of all is for another family to make an enormous sacrifice by choosing adoption for their child and to choose us as his/her/their adoptive family.
We don't know what the future holds. I'm not sure that I really want to know until it happens. I do know that whatever happens will, in the long run, be a very good thing. Even if it doesn't look like the picture that we have in our heads, we know that it will be good.
Until next time!
