Merry Christmas!

Well, it's been over a month now since I've updated our family blog so it's about time I did! The past month has been full of fun times with family and friends! We had our first snowfall at the beginning of the month. Benjamin enjoyed two days of sledding. We enjoyed 4 Christmas gatherings in the past 4 days. One more tonight with the extended Kreider family. Saturday we had our Christmas. It was a fun relaxing time just the three of us. Yes, it is still the 3 of us. There really aren't any new updates with our adoption. It continues to be a long and growing longer wait. We are anxious to see what 2008 will have in store for our family! Sunday was spent at Mom and Dad's house. Brad, Bradi, Raegan, and Sydney came in from Michigan. It was so great to see them and how the girls have grown! We missed not having Scott with us this year. He is in South Korea teaching English for a year. It was special this year to have Grandma Kreider with us. Monday was spent waiting for the heat man to come (Sunday night we went home, only to find that we didn't have heat) and going back to Mom and Dad's for Christmas with the Weavers. As always it was a day filled with lots of laughter and cheer! We enjoyed our church's Christmas Eve service as well. After church, to our surprise the family received a package from Brent's brother Scott. He sent us items from Korea as well as a letter to the family. It was really special!!! Tuesday was spent with Mother & Daddy (The Wiles). My brother's family and grandparents were there to enjoy the day. As noted in the picture slide I received a very special gift from my brother. He is an amazing woodworker. He made our daughter a shelf and carved into it the Chinese character daughter. Talk about a tear jerker! It was more of a bawling fest! Thanks Jonathan! You have no idea how much that meant! So, here we are the day after Christmas! Brent, Benjamin, Grandpa, and Brad are hunting with neighbor Paul at a pheasant farm. I'm sitting here feeling so blessed by the family we have in our lives. Thanks to all for the many ways you have touched our lives this past year. We hope that you and your family had a Blessed Christmas!

Our Tradition

Our day didn't exactly start out as tradition...Brent left early to go deer hunting at the family cabin. Around 7am Benjamin came into my room to say that his stomach felt sick. Ahhh! This part is not tradition! :-) He went back to bed and ended up sleeping until almost 9am! He did end up with a low grade fever for the rest of the day. I have a feeling the stomach thing was from his chest cold (lots of draining in his chest) and all the food he consumed at a birthday party he was at last night. When he came home he was completely exhausted. He had quite the social calendar over Thanksgiving break. We ended up having quite a relaxing day together. By this evening his fever broke and we were both a little stir crazy. And so now we get to the tradition part. Every year when Brent leaves on Sunday for deer hunting, Benjamin and I make a Gingerbread House together (from a Wilton kit) in the evening. He gets to pick the house design, I glue it together, put the icing on, and he takes care of the candy decorating. He told me "this is fun mom I like making a Gingerbread House with you every year!" How sweet! Traditions are a lot of fun!

Happy Birthday Brent!

Happy Birthday Brent!

This weekend Brent and I had the chance to go away to celebrate his birthday. We had a gift certificate to Speedwell Forge Bed and Breakfast to stay in the Paymaster's Office. It was beautiful! It was actually a little stone house off from the b&b itself. The funny thing was that the b&b was only 10 minutes from our house, however we still felt like we were able to get away from it all! Saturday we even started some of our Christmas shopping together. We ended our day with dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Thanks to my parents for keeping Benjamin Friday night and Saturday! He had a fun time too.
Happy Birthday Brent! You are an amazing husband and dad! I hope you have a great day!