Monday, November 26, 2007

Thanksgiving and Christmas in LA

We spent Thanksgiving in Los Angeles with my family. Most of our time was spent watching football and finishing our schoolwork. I typed out a 25 page paper during our three days in LA and watched the ASU, NU, and BYU games. We also visited our good friends Mike and Jenny, and their little girl. We went miniature golfing at Golf-N-Stuff, which contributed a scene to the original Karate Kid movie.

We're now back in Tempe and finishing up school. The term technically runs until December 15 or so, but I will be completely finished before the end of November. Jen is pretty jealous. Then on December 14 we head up to Moscow, Idaho, to meet Amanda. We're anxious to get to know her and her family. We are so grateful for her decision to allow us to adopt her baby girl.

For Christmas we'll be in LA again, and Jen's parents will fly in for a few days. Usually we spend that holiday with them in Washington, but this year we're rotating my parents in for Christmas. Then we'll return for school in early January, prepare our home for a baby, and return to schoolwork. I've only got two classes left, exams, and my dissertation (which will take a couple years). Jen has about six classes and will complete them over the next two semesters as a part-time student, then complete her exams and final document. She'll graduate in Spring 2010, and I'm expecting to finish a year later.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Its Baby Time

The good news is finally here! We've been waiting for years and a young woman named Amanda just selected us to adopt her baby. We're so excited! All we know so far is that Amanda is seventeen, she lives somewhere near Spokane, Washington, and she is expecting a baby girl on February 25, 2008. We also know that she printed our LDS services profile and thought and prayed over it for a while.

We first found out a couple weeks ago, but information was so slow to come that we were not sure we could really trust that this was for real. We didn't want to get our hopes up until we knew that she really did select us. Now we've sent her a personal email and are anticipating one back from her soon. We have so many questions for her I don't even know where to start. But we'll keep the blog updated as info becomes available.

Other news.... Is there really any other news that is half as interesting? No, not really, but here it is anyway. Jen is still dutifully pounding away at schoolwork. She's on a mission to complete as much as possible before the baby arrives so that she can still finish her program. She only needs a couple more classes after this semester, and she'll work on those part time as I finish up mine. I have two more classes, exams, and then the big dissertation. It looks like my dissertation will deal, ironically enough, with LDS services. I'm going to look at the Church's Indian Student Placement Program (1946-1996), though I've not yet decided if that will be my focus or just one of the several educational programs used by Navajos in the latter half of the twentieth century.

So I guess that is it for now. Look for more to come...