Keely pulled out the calendar at lunch today. We have lots of countdowns coming up. Kenley turns 14 in four weeks! Then a couple of weeks later begins Chinese New Year. Then we should only have about 4-6 weeks before travel.
Kenley is growing up so wonderfully. Our family is incredibly lucky to have such a sweet, cheerful, helpful (on and on and on with the good things!) girl with us. She is a sister that everyone should have. One of the things that I am really happy to see is that, this year, she is not dreading the birthday. She loves being a child and is learning that being a young adult is also pretty cool and that even being an adult has some advantages! I just have no words for how proud I am of her - 14!
Chinese New Year is one of the things that we are trying to bring into our family in a more-or-less traditional way. It is very structured and goes on for about 2 weeks with different things happening at different times. The first rule is to clean, clean, clean, before New Years night. Cool - that gets us a timeline to finish all of the projects that are started. Then, the kids get to stay up and eat and play all night long (Kenley and KG will check me on this, but I believe that the longer the kids stay awake, the longer Keely and I will live - so here is for a looooong night). We did it a bit differently last year and woke the kids up at around midnight and stayed up until about 6. Lots of fun! Then there are visits to neighbors and friends, some gifts to each other and cooking (and a few days of no cooking). All good, fun, and cheerful.
We are also looking ahead to travel. It looks like late February/early March which fits in with my work schedule, so (fingers crossed) we should not have to split up for the travel. So maybe we will all go. This has some complications emotionally and financially. The former we are looking at and working towards. The latter is also beginning to come up more and more often. We are pretty near the end of the money we had set aside. We are not getting any of the (many, many) grants that I have applied for. So we are starting on some fundraising. Kenley is making the cutest turtles that you have ever seen - we will be posting pictures pretty soon. Keely and I are teaming up to make felted balls. I can do a decent round object and Keely (surprise, surprise) is astoundingly good at making felted scenes. These are really awesome and as soon as she finishes the one for Kade, we will post some pictures and start seeing if anyone is interested. Mostly, I am not worried about it though. We are doing the best thing possible for our family and that is the most important. We have so much more than so many people in the world and are just really, really, peaceful about what we are doing.
So, as the days start getting longer slowly, and we begin the slow move into the depths of winter and on into spring, it is good to have plans and schedules. Realizing, of course, that these are only our plans. And by no means the end of the story!
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