My Favorites...

Ye Ru Hui b. Hubei, China
2003

I bombard my family with Christmas songs from Thanksgiving right on through Christmas. Most of my favorites are religious with the top two being "Oh Holy Night" and "Ave Maria". However, on the way to the post office tonight I heard the song "Feed the World" and I thought back to a few years ago and our Christmas in China. We are so very blessed, by our children, our extended family, our friends, our little furry friends and our health. So many others don't have this good fortune...

The girls have (I hope) been brought up in the spirit of giving. Every single year they adopt an "angel" from the angel tree in the mall and use part of their own money to buy presents for a child who would otherwise go without. Anna and Katie also take book bags , school supplies and old bikes to the Children's Home Society, which is the organization that we adopted them from all those years ago. This year Jia participated with them. I don't think she "gets it" yet, but in time she will.

The song in part goes...

"...and in our world of plenty
We can spread a smile of joy
throw your arms around the world
at Christmastime"

We are far from being in the position to give a lot, but even a very little means so much to some people. Even 10 dollars here and there....think about it. One less gift under our tree would provide for many.

Our favorite charities:

lovewithoutboundaries.com ...providing care and medical help for the orphans of China
halfthesky.org ....another very worthy organization that helps Chinese children
clintonfoundation.org ...provides low/no cost medicine for people living with AIDS in Africa
makeitrightnola.org ...providing help for survivors of Hurricane Katrina who still need so much and were outrageously neglected in their time of need.
chsfl.org ...The Childrens Home Society, an organization that gave us our precious A & K

I'll get off my soapbox now...but I'll be back!

JIA'S HOLIDAY SHOW

Jia and Parker after their big production

Parker before his big debut

Jia-Walkin' In a Winter Wonderland

Jia singing "Must Be Santa" never heard of it, but sure to be a bestseller, look for it on the charts!

On Thursday Jia had her holiday show. It was a rockin' time for the Kindergarten of Lakeside Elementary. Lets just say, I give those teachers a lot of credit and think this evil thought "better them than me!" that being said, it was very cute and Jia was so at ease and happy singing her part. Anna took videos so maybe we will figure out how to put them on the blog later.

One more week of school, yippee!

My Future Son-In-Law

I love the Florida Gators. Anna and Katie have known they were to aim for "Alligator College" since they could speak. Jia does a mean version of the Gator Chomp.

Even if this wasn't "my" team, and even if this wasn't an awesome SI cover I would love this guy! Tim Tebow has already won the Heisman Trophy,and has a great chance to win it again. Tim is a phenomenal athlete, leader and a devout Christian. If you don't know about him, read about him, he is just what I am looking for in a son-in-law; a moral, soon to be wealthy, leader, Christian and a GATOR!!!!!!

Now THIS is a Christmas Tree!

OUR BEAUTIFUL TREE

JIA THE ELF

WORKING UP A GREAT SUGAR HIGH!

KATIE: "Kids from all over the world,and it is really beautiful and 3-D"

JIA: "Chinese like me!"

ANNA: "Cat in the Hat reminds me of being little, reading stories with Mom"

LESA: "I love them all, but I chose my CELEBRATE ADOPTION ornament in honor of my daughters. I also choose the ribbons and bows from the last gifts both my Mom and Dad gave me for Christmas. I always attach these bows to the tree."

DREW: "My life has revolved around soccer for the last 12 years"
(btw, who let the Hurricane fan in the house???)

Matching Christmas 'do's

We had our tree decorating family party on Sunday night. We baked cookies, listened to Christmas carols and trimmed the main tree. It is a huge job. Drew put 1200 lights on the tree and it seemed like we had just as many ornaments.

I have decided that we have so many Florida Gator related ornaments that we will have a Gator tree next year!

During our tree decorating, I asked everyone to pick out their favorite ornament and tell me why it is their choice. Above are pics with each person and their ornament. (Of course I look atrocious, but Anna insists I include the picture of me, besides you all know how fabulous I look in person...LOL!!!!)

It was ( and always is) a true blessing to spend time together as a family and I am so thankful that our 14 year olds still want to hang out with Mom and Dad.

IT'S GREAT TO BE A FLORIDA GATOR!

Against everything I stand for...

The girls with the Charlie Brown Tree

Jia's idea of a fine decorating job. Almost put Katie over the edge.

Sweet Sisters

Bella Blue figuring out how she is going to knock over the tree

A quick cure for doggy breath

Jia and Mom at the tree stand

Our family loves to decorate for Christmas. I collect ornaments, not only beautiful ones, but ones from everywhere someone in our family visits, the trips to Santa from the time Katie and Anna were one month old (thank you Rita and Mike) until last year, and the precious ones made by my daughters.

We had three trees last year and decided this year that we would need a fourth. We became adventurous and actually went to a tree stand and bought a little tree. It is rather Charlie Brownish be we liked it....

At this point, let me tell you that I am a huge Christmas tree snob. There are certain rules and the biggest one is...NO COLORED LIGHTS.....never, ever....Aren't the lights supposed to signify to stars of Bethlehem?

Well.....standing in the row at Walgreens I had three sad pair of eyes looking at me and begging for "the colored ones Mama". I felt like a big grinch....and so, we have a little tree, right smack in the front of our house with colored lights and tacky balls. My kids are happy...that's all that counts. (Plus I have 3 more trees to go, all of which will have little white stars.....)

Black Friday....

No pictures here, but Anna and I had quite a shopping adventure on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving, when stores offer fabulous (?) deals in hopes of finally going from the "red" into the "black".) Let me preface this story by telling you there really wasn't anything we wanted or needed, we just wanted the experience.

Anna and I decided that if we went to sleep we would not wake up so we pulled an all-nighter. We tried to shake Katie from her slumber at 3:oo--no deal. At that point we were out of here! First stop was the convenience store for coffee (mom) and hot chocolate (anna) after all it was 50 degrees out. Then on to the post office to mail some of Mom's ebay sales. Since we were still waiting for the big stores we hit Walgreens...

Then it was time! JC Penney's opened at 4 and we were there to get our free gift!!!! Total purchases - zero.

After that we walked the mall until 5 and then it was time for Macy's whooo hoooo! We actually bought Katie a gift there, but she reads this so we can't say what it was.

We departed the mall at 5:30 and headed for the big gun, our fav store --TARGET. There was a line all the way around the building and we joined it. At this point we had egg sandwiches and Red Bull (for Mom) and Gatorade (for Anna). We had a plan for Target as we really did intend to shop there. Anna's job was to get to the DVD section and I was headed for toys....Anna did her job well, but I was side-tracked...

I got into the store and saw dozens of people running (I mean flat-out running) down an aisle. Senior citizens, Moms, teenagers, children. Being the shopper that I am, I figured that if people were running for this mystery item I better run too--and get at least one!

Turned out to be flat-screen tv's -small ones. We don't need one, but I was caught up in the frenzy , so I grabbed one. A nice lady offered me a cart and I proceeded to call home to wake up Drew (who had no idea we had even left the house). All Drew said was "Lesa, put it down".
Lucky for me Anna kept her head together and picked up the items we needed.

Staying up all night...I'm too old for it, coffee AND Red Bull...way too much caffeine, adventure with my Anna Banana....priceless xoxoxoxoxo

PS. When Drew woke up he went to his favorite store ...Costco and bought a 600" flat screen tv, and proudly told me that he would only have to cut some small holes in my wall unit.