Merry Christmas to all!!

It was weird waking up this morning with no sign of Christmas anywhere. I did get a chance to speak to my sister Becky and her family. That was very nice. We hope that all of our friends and family had a nice Christmas. This year Steve and I got the best present anyone could have given us - our beautiful daughter Megan. We had a good time visiting with her. We came in with our same bag of tricks that we do everyday. Toys, books, kleenex packages etc.. She is always interested in what we pull out of our backpack everyday. Luckily she doesn't get tired of the same toys. We also tried to get our 1st family Christmas photo taken today. We are missing one very important family member though - Max our golden retriever. We hope he enjoyed his Christmas presents that we left for him! Thanks to Mom and Dad Woodward for taking care of him during our trip!

After our visit with Megan we ran around doing a couple of errands. We are scheduled to go to court tomorrow to present our adoption application to the judge. If it is accepted by the court we will then be granted a court hearing to finally adopt Megan. The court date will most likely be later this week.

We then proceeded on to Michael, Teresa and Patty's house for our Christmas celebration. We had delicious meat pies, beer, vodka and ice cream. It was very good. Oleg and Inna also joined us for lunch and they gave us little gifts which was very sweet and thoughtful of them. After lunch Oleg and Inna left and then the rest of us watched Christmas Vacation. Steve and I have probably seen that movie at least 25 times, but it still makes us laugh. We walked home after the movie getting home around 6 pm. It was a nice day.

One interesting tidbit from yesterday - Policemen stand by the side of the road and can wave you to pull over for no reason at all. As we were driving to see Megan our van got pulled over. Oleg gets out of the van and proceeds to show the policeman his paperwork (I assume drivers license, registration etc). No problems. We are on our way in 5 minutes. This is a normal procedure and no need for alarm if you have all your papers in order.

We leave you with a couple of photos of Megan and our Christmas party for your enjoyment. Have a Merry Christmas!