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John will be having a birthday in a few days so we decided to have the family over for dinner and dessert. Most everyone was able to come and enjoy the evening. John talked me in to letting him buy a Wii for his birthday, so everyone played with it most of the night. Even Papa Calvin tried his hand at bowling. The boys had lots of fun playing golf, baseball and tennis, but I quickly found out that I needed to stick with bowling- it's the only game I was good at! Birthdays are fun times and my family LOVES any "excuse" to get together and have a good time. It won't be too long before another family member has a birthday and we can all get together again!

This past weekend we took a trip to Wilmington, NC to see Carmen's brother. While we were there, we visited the aquarium. All of the animals were so active that day (the photo is of the jellyfish tank). The octopus was swimming around, the lobsters were in a battle against each other, the alligators were making their way to the front of the exhibit and even the eels were out of their caves and lurking around in the large tank. We had a great day there hanging out and seeing all of the sights. Before we left Wilmington for the weekend, we HAD to stop by the beach and put our feet in the sand! Our dog, Allie, was with us on this trip and it was her first beach experience. She is such a prissy dog and we weren't sure if she would like the ocean or not, but I think she rather enjoyed herself. This trip made us look forward to our summer beach trip that is just around the corner. We can't wait for June!

We attended an adoption seminar this past weekend and we were able to hear from a few couples that have already been fortunate enough to welcome a little one into their home. We were also blessed with the opportunity to hear from a young birth mother who spoke to us about her journey with adoption. She had recently placed her baby boy for adoption in December and had the strength and courage to share her story with us, only 2 months later. She shared with us her feelings concerning her son’s adoptive parents and what an overwhelming sense of peace she had knowing her child was in a loving family. We were so impressed with this birth mother and we are excited to get to know the birth mother of our child. We hope that we will be able to make a special connection with our birth mother and she too will have a sense of peace knowing that her child will be part of a loving family as well.

Lots of Love-
John & Carmen

Happy New Year!!!

We rang in the New Year here at our house last night with lots of family around. Our house tends to be where everyone ends up on New Years Eve. We had lots of fun playing games and watching the ball drop in Time Square on television. There was lots of food and lots of laughter. Today we plan to spend a quiet day at home and prepare for the year to come.

2008 will be a wonderful year to bring home a baby!

Christmas has come and gone and John has spoiled me once again. We had a wonderful holiday with both of our families. We traveled to Virginia to see John's parents and brother and sister, then on Christmas Eve we had dinner with my mom's side of the family. Christmas day was busy... after opening Santa's gifts we had a late lunch with my dad's family at Grandma's house. I am so lucky to have such a kind and loving family that are supporting John and my decision to adopt. Everyone is so excited to meet the newest member of the family. My 2 younger brothers are so ready to be uncles- maybe they just want an excuse to play with toys!

-Carmen

Today is the first official day of my Christmas vacation =) Because I teach at a year-round school I will have 3 weeks off to spend time at home and with my family and friends. I have SO many things I need to get done before the Holiday and one of them is shopping- but, that is not a problem for me! John and I are looking forward to a happy Christmas holiday.

Merry Christmas!
-Carmen

We have just returned home from the beach where we spent the Thanksgiving holiday with Carmen's mom's family. We rented a condo large enough for all of us. We spent a lot of our time in the indoor pool or up in the room playing dominoes, card games and of course eating. Thanksgiving night we decided to battle the crowd and go shopping at midnight to get a head start for Christmas (the stores opened at 12:00 and were open all night). We would have never guessed so many people would have wanted to go shopping in the middle of the night! Everyone had a great time and we hope to do it again next year.

We have been working to get our profile ready to go on the website. We are excited and hopeful to start getting responses. We are so ready for a little one to join our family!