Christmas 2010

Unknown to all our friends and family who have logged on to get an update of our lives the past year this is a sentence that has been started, deleted, started and deleted again. These types of writings are very difficult to write. As the writer I want you, our friends and family to get a picture of our lives. Although sometimes as these things go, they portray a perfect life. I will be the first to tell you that being thrown into parenthood with two girls one who is now 7 and another who has just celebrated her 5th birthday is hard and rewarding and challenging and fun and tiring and exciting. As parents Ken and I have had to learn how to make time for ourselves (although I am not sure we have that completely figured out) how to make time for family things and of course discipline. Yes our kids do need to be disciplined. :)



Tatiana.



She is full of life and vivacious. She went though a period of time when the thought of being in a room without myself, Ken or even my mom could bring her to tears. Her little world has been rocked quite a bit. She was and is still in the process of learning to trust us that we would not leave her which we all understand and we can process in our minds. The hard part of it is to have the patience with her when she bursts into tears when you go to the basement to get something or even just walk into the adjacent room. With myself taking the year off we have really seen a difference in Tatiana, there is a lot of consistency which is what she needed. Taitana loves singing she has been singing Jingle Bells at every spare moment. She has had it stuck in her head for the last week. I have tried playing other songs, and teaching her other songs and she will incesantly go back to Jingle Bells. It has become a joke for all of us which she thinks is very funny. Tatiana thinks and talks about Colombia a lot, we told her we are going to go to Florida after Christmas which triggered her memory to Colombia, when we came home from Colombia we landed in Orlando to meet Ken's family. So she automatically thought that we would also be able to go to Colombia. She said she could show us where she lived and she could see her birth mother and her foster mom again.



Katherine.





Katherine has had the luxury of having a big sister to take care of her and be with her for her entire life. Because of that we have seen little of the fears of abandonment that we have seen in Tatiana. Katherine went through a period when Tatiana went back to school when she simply didn't know what to do with herself because she was accustomed to following her big sister. She has now learned to play and entertain herself. She especially likes when she can have the cat in the house with her, she will take it in her arms like a baby and cradle it and "read" stories to it. Yesterday she asked Tatiana and I to watch her while she danced with the cat. She really likes playing songs on the piano and will sit the cat on the keys while she plays. Sometimes I feel a little sorry for that cat. :)

Ken and I have felt very blessed with the family that God has allowed us to have. We wish everyone a very happy Christmas.

Ken, Sherri, Tatiana, and Katherine