A Merry Christmas and a Boxing Day at TECO!

Sierra made this for Samantha to explain what we do at Christmas (she also wrote her a more personal poem, which she did not want to share) and she's writing a poem similar to this but with the letters in Samantha's name.

Christmas was as good as it could be without Samantha and without Logan and Amber (and with neither Sierra nor I feeling well)...Sierra had the hardest time and missed Logan, Amber (they were with John's side of the family) and Samantha a lot. We spent most of the day just relaxing and playing games, especially Sierra's new Wii! Thankfully I didn't have to cook dinner although I did have some food to prepare - but making some pies and potatoes is nothing compared with an entire Christmas dinner! We went to Grammy and Grandpa's house around 4:00 and after eating we opened our presents and were home before 7:00. We then watched A Christmas Carol - we watched a different version last night and plan to watch another version tomorrow night! All in all our quietest Christmas ever.

Boxing Day was not a good day. We found out just before Christmas that we had to go toTECO (the Taiwan Consulate) in San Francisco because of an issue with Samantha's adoption. Basically her paperwork, which should have already been signed and completed in Taiwan was not and we had to sign for her. Anyway, Boxing Day is usually Jeremy's fav holiday (how crazy is that!?) but this year it was a very bad day. It's usually a very relaxed family day with nothing to cook and nothing to do except play games, eat leftovers and relax! Thankfully we decided to drop Sierra at my sister's house on our way to SF because what we thought would be a four to five hour trip to TECO turned into a NINE plus HOUR trip! It was horrendous. Getting there was fine. Even parking was ok. The hour and a half waiting in line was a little frustrating, especially when they yelled at us for not photocopying our passports (they never even looked at our actual passports) and for not filling out an additional form and then made us get out of line! Basically they were not nice. But still all was ok since we were done and leaving SF just after lunchtime. Plenty of time to get home for our Christmas celebration with Amber, John and Logan, or so we thought. Getting home was a total nightmare. The entire hundred miles home we went between 5 and 20 mph! The entire way and there was never any reason for it! Eventually we realized we were going to miss celebrating Christmas with Amber and Logan. On the plus side at least Sierra got to spend the day with them and celebrate a belated Christmas with them. She would have been miserable in the car all day (she gets carsick) and she would have been profoundly sad to miss spending the entire holiday with Logan since she was already so sad that Samantha is so far from us on Christmas and she didn't get to see them on Christmas. The most frustrating part for me is that TECO didn't actually do anything with our paperwork nor would they tell us anything so we have to hope that they send it ASAP so Samantha's case can proceed as it should.

Here are some photos from Christmas and Boxing Day (they are NOT in order and I am too tired/sick to put them in order):

Sierra giving the dogs their Christmas presents, Sierra and daddy playing Mario on the Wii (on the new TV) and our cat, who never get on the blog because she's shy!!

Sierra expressing her feelings about our traditional Christmas salads; just after dinner with her Cracker jokes, hat etc while trying to cover her bisquit mess and with Grammy and Grandpa's tree.

TECO in SF

Logan, Amber and Sierra having fun on Boxing Day