We are a little slow getting our Christmas letter out this year because Sofi, Emma, and I all got sick with ruptured ear drums. I didn't know that ear infections were contagious. So 2 weeks before Christmas I ended up in the ER, Sofi went in Christmas Eve and Emma the Monday after Christmas. It has been crazy and I know that Lee is happy to finally be back to work this week and not home taking care of sick girls. Because we were all sick, a family picture was not going to happen and my photographer moved anyway.
So after all these excuses here is our Christmas letter which was written the beginning of December, just not published.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,
What a year 2009 has been! Really the last couple of weeks have felt like a year to us, but there has been so much more. Last January we returned from a long holiday vacation to Missouri, New Mexico, Utah, and Idaho, back to New Mexico, Missouri, and then finally home to Georgia. It was the first time that we had taken Emma on a long trip to see her cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. It was such a fun trip, but we enjoyed returning home to our new apartment and trying to put it back together.
Lee then started his Captain’s Career Course, but because he was not keeping himself busy enough with the course work, he was heavily encouraged to pursue his master’s degree. So far, he is has just one year and one class left before he will graduate, and has received all A’s except for one class and that was a B. Lee was able to do really well in is Captain’s Career Course, he finished with the 5th highest test average. He was supposed to report to Ft. Leonard Wood, MO in August, but was working on interviewing for a position here in Augusta. As it turned out, at the very last minute he got the job and we remained here. He is the Executive Officer for the highest ranking civilian working on post, but basically he is a glorified secretary. He makes coffee (from what I hear not very well), schedules meetings, cancels meetings, drives his boss around, and does whatever his boss ask him to do. He loves it because he is working for a wonderful boss who is family centered and not work centered. I get to see him every night, and most of the time he is home just after 5:00 pm.
I kept busy working with Emma. It is amazing what she can do, and even more so, because she does it when she wants to and that is usually not on my schedule. I have been trying to get Emma involved in a play group and she just simply loves it. The best thing that happened to me this year up until this last month was that Lee got a position that does not require him to deploy for the next couple of years. Because of that I politely requested that we get a home and not rent an apartment. However, my home needed to have a kitchen that I could work in and with some room so that I don’t feel as if I am living on my stuff.
Emma has been so delightful this year. She first learned how to crawl, stand, and sit all in one week, and right after her grandparents had left from watching her get sealed to us in the Atlanta Temple. Emma was so cute once she learned how to crawl that she would only go to certain locations within the apartment. She wouldn’t crawl on anything hard, cold, or stingy (like grass). If she had to cross cold or hard floors she would try to crawl while avoiding placing her knees on the ground. She was not very good at it. In time she decided to walk, but that was after her 1st birthday. For her birthday, mom decided to get her the best present possible, a one year check-up with all the shots that accompany those visits. Since then she has really grown up; she babbles, understands commands such as fetch, and even sit. We are working on got fetch a soda for dad, but that one is taking a while. Since she has learned to walk, she has not walked once, she is constantly running everywhere and it helps to have such an open 1st floor on our new home.
As a family, we love our new home. We moved in the first week of August, and decided that once we were in we would again submit our paperwork to be eligible to adopt again. It wasn’t more than a couple of days after everything was complete that we got a phone call asking if we were still interested in the baby from Oklahoma that we were trying to adopt last year. Of course we said yes, and soon we were trying to figure out what we needed to do to help the process along. We found out that there was going to be a court date to relinquish parental rights of the mother to LDS family services mid-November, so we decided to take the gamble and be in the area so we could receive Sofia soon after that date. Well, the trip did not go as planned in that there were lots of hiccups along the way. We finally got to meet with Sofia the day before the court hearing, and the state social worker invited us to the hearing. As it turns out, the state had never given up custody of a child to a private adoption agency before, and because of that, they were weary to give them up. After another court hearing the next day, we learned that the State of Oklahoma was really scared to relinquish custody for fear of not knowing who we were. So another date was set to return to court, but the new date was the day before Thanksgiving. Before that court date, we needed to meet with the State of Oklahoma so they could get to know us better. Everything went so well, that on the day before Thanksgiving court date, the judge decided not to come to work because we were his only case and he thought this was not going to work out. He was wrong! The state found us to be model adoptive parents and was surprised at how efficient LDS Family Services were at their job. By lunch time we had possession of Sofia, but there was still the problem of being approved to leave the state; the Interstate Compact paperwork had not been approved by the end of the day, so we would have to remain in Oklahoma for at least the weekend, and maybe longer.
Let’s just say that spending Thanksgiving in Oklahoma without family and a place to call home really stinks. We moved from hotel to hotel eating Mexican food on Thanksgiving day because only a couple of restaurants were open and the lines were really long. It was nice, different, and I felt like we were betraying the season. Well Monday and Tuesday came and went, and after sitting around, we just had to leave. So we decided to drop Emma off with Lee’s parents at the border, but along the way we got a phone call allowing us to leave. It was perfect timing, because we were all getting sick and needed to get going and return home to feel better.
Well in a short letter, these were the events that have taken place in our now larger family over the past year. We have felt so blessed, and we want to thank each of you for your thoughts and prayers in our behalf.
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year
The Lorenz Family (currently based in Georgia)
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