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Sweet Crafty Tree Christmas

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Santa

We made our annual trek to visit Santa yesterday.  I'd like to have a photo of Simon with Santa every year for as long as he will go for it.  He loves talking with Santa -- has no fear whatsoever.  This was his second visit of the season, actually.  Simon and I were at the mall once before and he was just drawn to Santa.  It was a quick visit but I wanted to wait for a photo until Mark was with us.  I know that Simon particularly likes the blue candy canes that Santa is offering this year.  Santa was very kind, as you would expect.

A funny side story.  The first year Simon was home, Mark helped Santa by dressing up as Santa at his studio and doing photos to benefit Lafayette Urban Ministries.  Simon sat on his lap and we have a framed photo in Simon's room.  We also have a framed photo of Simon's visit to what he considers to be the 'real' Santa last year.  Simon will take the two photos and make them face each other.  Then, in a somewhat disguised voice, the 'real' Santa will say to 'Daddy' Santa, "thank you for helping me."  And Daddy Santa responds, "no problem, Santa -- happy to help."  Crack me up!  I love Simon's sense of humor and I love his imagination.

As promised ...

Where to begin???  I'm so far behind I'm not sure I could ever catch up.  Things I'd like to blog about:

• two trips to Pennsylvania
• Simon going to his first wedding
• Other firsts for Simon like his first trip to a Purdue football game and Mackey arena
• Mark starting school full-time and his adventures working in the ER
• A job change for me this fall
• Halloween
• Simon's birthday
• Hands on Trucks
• Many outings with friends
• And so much more

But where I will begin is with an adoption update.  Not much to report, unfortunately.  We are still on target to receive a referral in the next 4-6 months, which would be awesome.  We are at the point in time where the documents in our dossier will start to expire so next week I will begin to build our second dossier.  When we started the process again, I never imagined that it would take so long that we would get to this point.  But here we are -- ready to paperchase all over again.  (insert big sigh here)  However, knowing the love and joy we are walking towards makes it all worth it.  Especially as Simon told us all about the sister he will play with in the future.  (Note: we have not requested a girl -- this is Simon's current wish, a sister.)

Another quick update is that I moved from the College of Health and Human Sciences to the College of Veterinary Medicine at Purdue.  So far, so good.  It's kind of fun to learn about a new area on campus though I do miss my former colleagues.  But as you can imagine, there are awesome and fun people in Vet Med too.  It's just kind of ironic that the woman who is allergic to every bloomin' animal on earth is working for the Vet College.

And Mark is glad to be wrapping up his first semester as a full-time Nursing student at Ivy Tech.  He has one more week of classes and then finals.  He is doing very well in his classes.  He is also working two part-time jobs at IU Health Arnett Hospital.  One job is in patient registration; the other as a tech.  I think it's safe to say that he enjoys the tech job more because he gets to use some of the things he's learning in class.  For example, last week he got to insert a catheter.  I know -- gross.  But he loves what he is learning and it gives him lots of hand-on experience.

Of course, what would a return to the blog be without a photo of Simon??  He is growing in so many ways!  He is getting taller by the day it seems and we are letting his hair grow out to see how curly it will be.  His vocabulary and love of learning seems to grow every day too.  Nothing gets by him and his memory is amazing.  If things keep up at this pace, he is going to run circles around me and Mark.

So there you go!  Back in the blogging world.  We've got a lot to look forward to this month and I hope that I can keep up.