Merry Christmas!

Just wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas, and share what Christmas is looking like around here.....

The Crippled Lamb

I seem to love anything Max Lucado writes, but this children's Christmas book is especially close to my heart this year, probably because this is my first Christmas waiting for our daughter, a SN child.



For those of you who may not have read The Crippled Lamb, I highly recommend it. It is a touching story about Joshua, a disabled lamb, who finds he has a special purpose and place in this world. Because Joshua was born with one leg that didn't work quite right, he often feels left out - like on a wintry night when he was left behind in a Bethlehem stable. Joshua feels his true worth when he is called upon to help keep the baby Jesus warm. This touching tale helps kids see that even if they are different, God has a unique plan for their lives.

Every Christmas season, I look forward to re-reading the Christmas books we've accumulated over the years. During this special, holy season I love to sit in front of a cozy fire reading these stories to the boys. I have to say, this year I had a very hard time getting through this one without sobbing!

During this busy time, I hope everyone is pausing to spend TIME with loved ones and to reflect on what and WHO this season is truly all about.

Wishing everyone abundant blessings this Christmas season!

Powerless

As I'm sure many of you have heard, we in New England have had a rough few days!

On Thursday, our local weather forecast showed we were going to get a 'bit' of sleet and then quickly turn to rain, with the ice and snow being further north. To say the least they were WAY OFF with the rain/ice line!!!! The kids asked Thursday night if they were going to have school on Friday, and I said confidently the way it looks now, I would bet yes. A few hours later at around 10:00pm on Thursday night we lost power. I started to think we might just get a bit more ice than reported. John and I settled in for a long winters night (that sounds like a story doesn't it;-). We awoke to the sound of trees breaking at about 2:00 am. In the morning, with still no power, we looked out the window to quite a sight.



We're one of the lucky households, as our power was restored at about 8:00pm on Saturday night. We were without power for only about 48 hours, and there are still about 200,000 people in NH alone without electricity. Last night, it got down to about 10 degrees. We had a relatively easy time of it.....we have a wood and gas stove, along with a generator to power our water pump, furnace, refrigerator and a few outlets. Our house was the place to be over the past couple days, and we had friends spend the night on Friday night. We had one big power outage slumber party!! My good friend Shay taught, or at least TRIED to teach me how to play cribbage by candle light! I can say we did a great job making the best of it!

Times like this make you appreciate so much of what we take for granted, and it definitely makes you realize how prepared or unprepared you are in the face of an emergency. Despite how much 'in control' we may think we are, in reality, we are 'powerless' in may ways. We are however, not powerless in choosing how we react to and in situations such as these. We've seen neighbors and friends come together and help each other in many ways, but we've also seen much frustration only after a couple days. It makes me wonder what it would be like for an extended period of time? In some parts of New Hampshire they're saying it may not be until next weekend that full power will be restored.

It will feel a bit guilty tonight as I reach to turn the heat down and the lights off when we turn in for the night. Please say a prayer for many in New England who are in shelters, or at home trying to stay warm for a fourth night tonight.

My beloved Sasha doll

A couple of you had asked to see my Sasha doll I spoke of in my previous post. If you haven't read my previous post, please scroll down, as this post will definitely make more sense with some background. In an effort to be accommodating, I retrieved her from storage. It gave me a chuckle because she was stored many years ago wrapped in a blanket without any clothes! I just couldn't bring myself to take a picture of her 'au naturale', even though she's just a doll. Luckily she was stored with another 'friend' that had a baby dress on that fit her.

As hard as I've tried, I can't remember what I named her. Now remember, she was bought back in the early 70's, and I think this was the best representation of an Asian baby my parents could find at the time. She does look a bit more Hispanic to me now, but to a young child's unrestricted imagination, she worked just fine;-)!

As I've been looking at her, I wonder if our daughter will have a fair or dark complexion? Not important, just a thought.

For fun, I put her hair in the common 3 ponytail hairdo.....Do you think she resembles a Chinese baby girl any better? All I could find were rubber bands....I'll have to get some ribbon to dress it up a bit;-).;-).
The interest in my Sasha doll led me to do some research on them....pretty neat....It looks like I have one of the early baby girl dolls, as her eyelids are raised. Here's the info I found....

Sasha dolls were created by a Swiss artist called Sasha Morgenthaler. Born in 1893, she led the most extraordinary life. Within her lifetime she was an artist, toy-maker, wife and mother: and also trained to be a midwife. She first began making dolls in her forties. Her first dolls were called studio dolls, and were produced from 1942-1975. These dolls were handmade and expensive to buy. Sasha's hopes for all children to be able to have access to her dolls resulted in them being produced in series. On the 11th May 1964 Puppenfabrik Hans Gotz were granted a licence to produce Sasha dolls in series. The first Sasha dolls went on sale in all Migros stores (Switzerland) on 8th October 1965. The English Stockport Sasha was initially made by Frido Limited in 1965 and from January 1970 by Trendon Limited and from September 1984 Sasha Dolls Limited became the selling company until 1986 when the factory closed.
Frido/Trendon produced sixteen Sasha babies during their production years. The first babies were produced in 1970; they were sexed babies. The boys had blonde hair and the girls were brunette's; the early babies also had raised eyelids, after 1978 all babies were non-sexed

Some of these dolls fetch a pretty high price nowadays! Maybe she can help fund our adoption??? Only as a last resort.... I would have trouble parting with her:-).