Beth's staff Christmas party was this Tuesday at the Boathouse; I got to go along (you pay your own way) with her and there was a white elephant gift exchange. We brought jars of soup (which were highly coveted as stealing targets) and brought home some Chuck Norris folders and half a globe. We'll probably take those to Michigan when we visit family over Christmas break and play dirty bingo.....Wednesday was the annual church "gingerbread" house build/decorating event. Alex and Missy were at the Revolution white elephant / Christmas party so I just hung around the building going on and watched, and was asked to be a judge for the ugly sweater contest; ugliest and most creative categories. The kids both found some old junk toys (and the Hamster Dance CD) to give away in the white elephant gift exchange; Alex got some candy as a gift, and Missy got an almost working tablet. It supposedly did not work, but it came on when she powered it up. For a while. And the battery did not hold a charge. Seems Jeremy hasn't used the thing since 2012 when it wouldn't work any more. But, Missy did a factory reset and got it to do a few things before she gave up on it.....Beth's book club met at our house on Thursday. I took that opportunity to make myself scarce; I've put the blankets up in the stairwell again so it's like the house is divided and I wasn't even there.....As of Friday evening, I am now on vacation until next year. Christmas is coming up fast. Friday we all went to Fort Wayne to go to Burlington because Alex and Nat don't have winter coats. We found a bunch of stuff, but the coat selection was pretty minimal and we weren't that impressed with it. It was no better/different than TJ Maxx to my eyes. We had dinner at Fazoli's and happened to meet the Monsma's there, also having dinner and doing some shopping. But we had to get back to Warsaw in time to drop off Natalie at the bowling alley at 9 where she was going to a birthday party (o the drama associated with that) for cosmic bowling. We were back in plenty of time. She did have a great time although she is a terrible bowler.....We've spent most of the week doing online shopping for Christmas

The girls are going to Italy and Greece. Not right now, but next year. Just like Alex's trip to France this summer, the school is hosting a trip in summer 2020. There was an informational meeting about it last Monday which we forgot to go to, but anyway we checked out the video info for it and it looks awesome. Both of the girls want to go. Now we just have to pay for it. Oh well, it'll be an amazing time for both of them.....The forgetting things keeps on keeping on, this week we had a case conference for Nat at the high school that we forgot about, and an appointment with her psychologist that we forgot about. Gotta get past that.....FCC Kids had the Great Glitter Explosion of 2018 this past Wednesday.....Nat's great-grandparents came to church with us today. They're looking for a new church, maybe they'll start coming to FCC.....

Alex has been looking forward to this weekend for some time. The new Super Smash Bros video game for the Switch was released on Friday, but he had pre-ordered it weeks ago with money he earned at his job. So on Friday he hosted what usually waits until his birthday, a video game sleepover. He and Beth went to pick up his copy right after school, and I picked up the pizza on the way home from work. By the time I got home the girls were already all gone; they bugged out to stay overnight in a hotel in Fort Wayne, do some shopping, use the pool. So I got to watch the house, as it were. 7 or 8 boys all came over and they played the Smash game pretty much all night. I went to be around midnight but I don't think the boys crashed until around 3:00. And I hear the game is pretty awesome, that was the only one they played all night long. They didn't even want to break for ice cream.....The boys were all gone by 11:00 or so, and I had the rest of the day to work on clearing leaves from the backyard, which I have been trying to get to for a while without success. There was just enough time on Saturday to go to the rental place and check out the walk-behind leaf blower, but since they closed soon and were also closed Sunday, I had to keep it for the weekend which was going to be around 55 bucks. Which I decided was worth it to get things over with. So I spent a few hours blowing and hauling leaves back to the dumping ground in the brush in the backyard, then the thing just sat around for the rest of the weekend. Once I got the leaves into piles, getting them on a tarp was really pretty quick work. I asked Nancy across the street if she wanted me to clear her leaves too, but the city isn't picking up any more leaves as I found out, so she didn't have anywhere to put them and she wanted the owners to do it anyway (they haven't been taking care of things over there). So it sat idle and I'll return it on the way to work in the morning.....Beth took off for Michigan today to deliver soup. She had an order for over $200 from an old family friend and several other family orders to fill so the trip there and back was worth it.....The trip was especially worth it because she forgot about a show that she was supposed to do. The small show at the fairgrounds (she did it last year, made about enough to break even I think) was on Tuesday and she thought it was Thursday. This goes along with forgetting what time the Wawasee show started, I guess. She never realized it until too late, so so much for that. No big deal though, she wasn't going to make much.....last Monday Beth and Natalie and I had a meeting with the attorney in town to sign some paperwork regarding the adoption. We don't know where the parents are or how to contact them, and the efforts to do so have not been successful, so we're going forward without them as they have legally abandoned her. Natalie even got to sign some papers herself that say she waives her right to a hearing and consents to the adoption. If everything goes perfectly, we could be done in a few months.....The kids and I all got the pool loaded into the back of the truck (hope we didn't beat it up too badly) and hauled over to the storage unit this week. See ya in the spring.....

It’s been a busy and good and productive weekend. Friday Beth and I had an appointment with the attorney’s office to get the process started for adoption! We have to inform the bioparents, but first we have to be able to find them, which may not be that easy a task. We have a follow-up meeting on Monday, also Nat’s birthday, to sign some papers and get things started. Nat’s coming with us so she can sign some as well…..Friday evening was the Komets teddy bear toss game against the hated Toledo Walleye. The Boschains unfortunately couldn’t go with us this time though. Beth had been busy all week making soup for the big Wawasee craft show Saturday, so it was against her better judgement to go to the game but she did anyway. I swung through Goodwill on the way home from work and picked up some extra stuffed animals (a whole big bag for $6) and the girls picked out a few of theirs as well. Then, since Alex was working until 7:00, we had to pick him up on the fly and drive hard to get to FW in time. The puck was dropping just as we got to the parking lot, so we were hoping we didn’t miss the first Komets goal. No worries there, we missed the first few minutes of the game but there was no score. Nor was there a Komets goal for another period and a half, by which time they had gotten down 2-0. Then they tied it up early in the 3^rd period, and it remained 2-2 until the end of regulation. 3-on-3 hockey in overtime is crazy…and they scored with about a minute left in overtime to win it 3-2! Big crowd at the Coliseum for this game, and going nuts. Over 3000 stuffed animals collected, I heard….Of course we didn’t make it back home until near midnight, and Beth had to get up early to make two pots of soup for samples at the Wawasee show, so she got very little sleep. She got the soup made, and I got the van all loaded up and ready to go; as we arrived at the school there was a decided lack of people unloading stuff for setup and the parking lot was already packed, so we had a pretty uneasy feeling that Beth had gotten the time wrong. By an hour and a half, as it turned out. She was supposed to be set up by 7:00 and she thought she was supposed to be set up by 8:30. So, the show was already well into full swing by the time we got there. And they had given her spot away since she didn’t show up. There was an emergency spot for her to set up in, though, which turned out to be a really good one. It was near the back of the main hallway and looked out of the way at first glance, but there was a lot of foot traffic going that way because it was the way to the food sales, I think. She also forgot her paper bags so I had to run home to get them, but when I returned to the school I had to park in the overflow across the street at a church. But their parking lot was full so I had to go to the overflow to the overflow, which was a grassy field. And all the snow from the last week or two had just melted, and it was raining, so the ground was sodden and I knew driving into the field was a bad idea as soon as I did it. I got about 20 feet before the van got stuck in the mud. However, there was already a tow truck on the premises, towing another car that was stuck before me. Then a pickup truck tried to go around me and got stuck, and a full size van tried to go around me and got stuck, and a bunch of other cars that had parked earlier got stuck...and the tow driver was a busy guy. He pulled a couple others out of the mud before getting to me, and by that time someone had parked in the driveway behind me and the full size van so he could not pull me out from behind. He got creative though, and hooked up my van to his tow cable (as fully extended as it can go, I think) from the side and just pulled the van sideways until the back of it was facing open ground. Pulling me past the full size van, my van missed hitting it by about a whisker. But he got me out successfully, even though it tore the hell out of the grass. But there were several others to get out as well, and it looked like the grass was going to be in even worse shape later. Anyway, after that I finally made it back to the craft show with the bags and Beth had already sold a ton of soup. I stayed to help out for the rest of the show, until 3:00, and sales were very steady the whole time. In the end we counted up $905 in sales from this show. $1005, if you count a $100 sale I had at work just Friday…..Sunday was a work day, mostly, after church. I raked leaves (not an easy task in the freezing wet), rented another storage unit to put the camper away for the winter (had to call Patrick to come over and help me push the camper into the storage unit), and tried to put Christmas lights on the spruce tree in the front yard. Nope, it is just too big, I can’t reach the top any longer.