December & January

Here it goes again! I'm playing my catch up game! Chris and I are still busy at school, so blogging is pretty much on the back burner, but I do like to make sure I keep my blog going somewhat so my England family can check out what we are doing.
Christmas was soooo much fun this year!! We kicked off the holiday season with a Thanksgiving dinner at Victoria's house. We had everyone there, who was in the USA, minus Elder Josh Wilsher. Not too long after that, we had a great McDowell Christmas party hosted by Diana and Justin (Chris's sister). My kids felt very spoiled!! Christmas Eve was our usual, a quiet night at home reading the nativity and eating a candle lit meal together. Christmas day was fabulous!! It was my most favorite Christmas ever, having three kids just made it all that much more fun and having 3 kids that are at the perfect age for enjoying it was just a blast!! (Sorry, the pics are all saved to discs and deleted.)
New Year's came and went without excitement. lol...Chris and I just felt exhausted and all I wanted to do was stay home. So, we rented a movie or two and watched movies with the kids.
Chris and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary on January 16th. That was an adventure! lol! The kids went to stay with their grandparents, something they always enjoy. Chris and I went to watch Avatar in 3D. I got SOOOO motion sick that I couldn't enjoy it. I'm not really sure what happened! lol...The next day we 'accidently' hiked 15 miles to a hot pot! I say 'accidently' because it was supposed to be a 2 mile thing, followed by a relaxing soak in the hot water. Instead, it was horribly exhausting and we walked 6 miles in the pitch darkness, with no end in sight! My ankle was hurt, but I just kept thinking, "If I sit down, I'll never get back up. Then I will literally just freeze to death in the snow." lol....so I kept pushing it, while I couldn't help but constantly think how greatful I was that was born in the century I was born in! lol!! I just couldn't bare the thought of the newspapers reading, "Couple Freeze to Death on Anniversary"......lol..... Anyway, we enjoyed our time together and we'll always have a great story to add to our anniversary stories.
We tend to have a lot of disasterous, yet hilarious anniversary stories. Like our fist year married when we saved all our money to go to the Chattanooga Choo Choo in TN. It was supposed to be "original", well, it was.....it hadn't been updated since the 1920s and the room came with two single beds. It was grotty and still smelt like a rotten train station, but we sure laugh about it now! Yes and this was the same trip that we had no money, so we had to split a piece of pizza, for our anniversary dinner. lol.......
Well, I had my finals week, at school. I scored myself all As and I'm proud to say I am a straight A student, as of now, anyway. Chris has done his finals, but is awaiting grading. I'm sure he did great!! My goal is now to CLEP out of a bunch of classes. So, I'm studying extra hard, in addition to my classes. CLEPing would save me about $6,000 and about 6 months of school, so it'd certainly be worth it. Just a tedious process.
Landon has started basketball and had his first game last week. He's enjoying it. Korbin is just about done potty training. He's doing soooooo well!! And I think we will be taking a winter trip to the zoo, as promised, soon. (I was aiming for Spring, but he has suprized us so!) Kayla is now starting to learn her dance for her Ballet recital in June. She really enjoys it, but is most looking forward to getting a piano and doing piano lessons, as is Landon, next school year.
And well, that about wraps it up! Life is moving pretty fast and furious lately! Not much else to do, but school, family, home, church....repeated over and over. Brain hasn't much else to think about right now, but that. Well, except Haiti. I've been pretty saddened for the Haitian people. They are truly in my prayers, especially the orphans.
Oh and while it is on my mind, Kayla has been with us for (almost) 6 months!!! Which means we can start working on the legal process of adoption. Well, I should rephrase that, we can start on the last part of the legal process. This is a legnthy process (I've never seen so much paperwork!!), but we are almost done. Just waiting for an adoption assistance app to be approved and processed. Then, signed and agreed apon. Then the paper work will move onto a lawyer, at which point we will have more paperwork to finalize the adoption and to change Kayla's name (Kayla Maylee McDowell). In the meantime, caseworkers are preparing post adoption homestudies and getting ready to present our case before a judge. A court date will then be set and we should be able to to 'attend' the court via live video from a UT court room. Awesome!! (Adoption will take place in OR, but we aren't required to be there.) We are still being told it *might* happen in March, but be prepared if it happens in May. (sometimes things 'come up')
So...phew....that's life right now. It's a busy life right now. :) And it's a good life.
(Sorry I don't have pictures this time. It's either this or nothing, just don't have time to upload today.)