Greetings to you this Christmas season. I apologize for the emailed Christmas letter, but it was the only way I could get our note out to all of you before the end of the year. I hope you will understand. I may not have everyone’s email address, so please feel free to pass this along to family or friends who would enjoy reading this!
We have had an extremely busy year. We are thankful for all we have and the health and happiness of everyone in the Smith home. We’ve had a lot of great changes, and would love to share with you what has been happening in our lives.
Jeremiah is still employed at the B. Police Department; he just celebrated his 10th anniversary. He is on his 4rd year as a bicycle patrol officer. He is also busy with the SWAT team and the honor guard. He was able to travel to several parts of the country for training and is now a certified instructor for police biking. Unfortunately he attended a few very moving memorial services for fallen law enforcement officers in our area.
Kimberly is still a stay at home mom and is no longer home schooling the kids. We decided to enroll them in the local public schools and now we have more time with Elijah and Samuel at home. She volunteers for an organization for the Medical Advocacy Team. www.medicaladvocacyteam.blogspot.com Her role is to find host families for international children who are ill and need to come to the U.S for surgery. It is a rewarding job to help children in this way. She enjoys journaling, gardening, reading, playing with the kids and going on fun day trips with the family.
Loren will be 13 years old in March and is becoming a young man! He is in 7th grade and attends H. Middle School. He enjoyed playing soccer again this fall. He loves to read, build things, play outside, and is very helpful with the little boys. He is getting excellent grades in school. He’s a very smart guy.
Corinn is 11. She is in 5th grade at C. Elementary. She loves art, animals, making people laugh, singing and helping in the kitchen. She’s compassionate and caring. She likes to play outside, and cuddle on the couch watching movies. She’s doing really well in school and is making a lot of good friends.
Kylie is 6. She’s in 1st grade at C. She is a funny, sweet little girl. She loves to cuddle and loves her daddy. She loves singing, dancing, coloring, dressing up, pretending and everything most six-year-old girls like.
Elijah is our little 3 1/2 year old boy from Haiti. He came home to us in March of 2009. He is a happy, cuddly, sweet boy. The adjustment has been going well and he is such a blessing to our family. His adoption was complete and final on 9/9/09! He is funny and loves to laugh. He had his first experience with snow today and had a great time playing in it with his sisters.
Samuel will be two on Jan. 4th. He is the sweetest, happiest toddler. He charms everyone he meets! He loves to be active, is running everywhere and gets into everything! He is trying out words daily. He loves his brothers and sisters and they are very helpful caring for him.
Recently we decided to adopt again. We heard about Mercy, a little girl in Uganda in October. Kim has been helping trying to find medical care for her through MAT. Mercy has a form of epilepsy. She is also and orphan and it was discovered that processing an adoption would be more beneficial and quicker than getting her temporary medical care. Her story pulled at our hearts so we decided to add her to our family! We are hoping to travel to Uganda in February 2010 to bring her home. We have been busy with paperwork, fundraising and getting our family ready for another child. Mercy is four years old and will be sharing a room with Kylie. We were able to speak to her on the phone yesterday morning. Her laugh is so contagious!
We still live in the country, on our 5 acres. We have been working hard around the place and have been remodeling our studio (a 600 sq ft building used as a recording studio by previous owners). Loren decided he wanted to move his bedroom out there so now he is living in that building, about 20 feet from our back door. This fall, Corinn moved out there in her own room. They love their bit of freedom. We have also been busy ripping up our rotting back deck with plans to replace it soon. There are many projects we hope to finish! We would love to get a few small farm animals in the future. Chickens would be fun…
We hope you and yours have a very Merry Christmas and wonderful New Year. May God bless you!
Jeremiah, Kimberly, Loren, Corinn, Kylie, Elijah and Samuel
1 comment:
Tyler has been part of our police department Explorer's program for four years even though he doesn't want to go into police work. It has built civic responsibility into him. Jessica has decided to major in criminal justice but has no clue what she wants to do so she joined Explorers a few weeks ago and is going at it full force.
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