Happy Birthday Kaleb!

On December 11th, this little punk turned 9 years old. It's hard to imagine that he can be that old. Where does the time go.

My Christmas Story

I have been a slow motion circus this year getting our Christmas tree up. We usually put up our Nativity scene Thanksgiving weekend, but we didn't even think about it this year. Then we went on vacation from December 1-6. We came home and had a zillion things going on. Finally, on Sunday the 13th Kalen and I braved the 2 degree weather and picked a tree up at Home Depot. We quickly went thru the store half frozen and got two boxes of lights and came home. Mark was working and I refused to go outside and saw the end of the tree so on Monday night Kaleb and Mark manned up and cut the bottom off the tree and put it in the stand. On Tuesday, after school work was done the kids and we went to decorated it. I pulled the lights out of the box and I knew something wasn't right with them. I took a good look at the box and realized I had bought the 'net lights' that go over a bush. That was the end of the tree decorating. So yesterday, we headed back to Home Depot to exchange the lights. Of course they didn't have anymore lights for trees, so we ended up going to Kmart to get lights. Finally..............we decorated the tree and this is the beginning of 'my Christmas story'.
I put the lights and ribbon on the tree and the kids were putting ornaments on it. I quietly listened as they rummaged through the box of ornaments and talked about when they made this ornament or that ornament or where an ornament came from. It was pretty cool. It was a good feeling to know that these ornaments mean something to them and that they aren't just something to put on the tree. In the discussion about this ornament and that ornament the kids started arguing over a "First Christmas" ornament that had a baby picture in it. Kaleb thought it was him, Kalen thought it was her and so on. I settled the argument by explaining that it was Kalen. Kaleb asked "how come I don't have an ornament that says 'First Christmas' on it?"
I told him that since he was born two weeks before Christmas and was a total surprise to us and everyone that no one bought him one. He wanted to know what I meant by him being a 'surprise'. He knows his birth story to some extent but hasn't ever thought much about it. So now was a good time to tell the story all over again. This is the story I told him................
On December 12, I had taken Kalen to town for her 'KinderMuzic' class. We had come home about 1:00 p.m and there was a message on our answering machine from Ellen at Wyoming Childrens Society she wanted us to call her ASAP. I called Ellen and she told me that there was a baby boy that had been born the night before in Sheridan. His birth family had not made an adoption plan prior to his birth and they wanted to put him up for adoption. She explained that he had been born an emergency c-section and had not been breathing when he was born. He had been checked out thoroughly and everything looked good. The family did not want to pick the adoptive family, they had asked the agency to place him with a family. Ellen said they had been through their family profiles and we had been waiting the longest (20 months) and they wanted to know if we were interested in him. YES!!!!
Ellen wanted us to wait to go to Sheridan until the papers were signed by the birth parents terminating their rights. It would be the next morning before their case worker from Buffalo could get to Sheridan and talk with the family and get the papers signed. We talked back and forth thru the evening and the next morning with the ladies from WCS. Finally about noon they called us and told us that the papers were not signed, they were waiting on a notary, but there was no doubt the birth parents were going to sign. It was time for us to get on the road. So off we went to Sheridan and the rest is history.
Kaleb asked a few questions about things and then he said "why did Wyoming Children Society pick you to be my parents?" I told him again that they looked through all their profiles of families and we had been waiting the longest and thought we would be a good match. This was his response "well, it's sure worked out good for me." I didn't cry, but there were tears in my eyes.
What a wonderful experience I shared with my children over our Christmas tree. I'm only sad that Mark had to work late and didn't get to share the time with us. Christmas cannot get any better than that for me.