Merry Christmas

Christmas cards are going out today and we've included our blog address once again as a conduit for our yearly update. For those of you new to the blogosphere, this has been a great way for us to connect with friends and family, share pictures and update on the adoption process, and now the daily happenings of one Ethan-Stone Chambers.



This year has been full of blessings and unexpected surprises. On March 1, we were thrilled with the arrival of our first child. Ethan-Stone continues to amaze us as he grows and learns new things daily. He loves to sort and stack and is "all boy" when it comes to rough-housing and digging in the dirt. I was blessed to be able to stay home with him for the first 6-months, until he was almost exactly a year old. He is now in a Mother's Day Out program, which allows me the flexibility to work on freelance projects from home and still keep plenty of time with our little E.

Heath is still with E-surance in Addison and enjoys the friends there. He received a promotion recently that has him on his toes through the transition, but he seems to enjoy the work behind it a bit better. He's dealing more with lawyers now than the actual people who were in the accidents, so I think emotions are running a bit lower and overall everyone is a bit more level-headed. His work schedule still skews earlier, so he's back home by 4:30 p.m. to play with E and allow me a quick break to re-check E-mail and cook supper.

We spent lots of time at the lake house this summer. Heath squeezed in as much wake skating as he could with a little one. He's been a trooper through the whole adoption process and volunteered to sell his boat, car and pin ball machine to pay off the lawyers fees and keep everything afloat with me only working part-time. Since Ethan-Stone was a surprise baby (read back in other posts), we were not able to use Gladney as a service provider through the process and had to pay our own wonderful lawyer out-of-pocket. So, baby number two will be a Gladney baby since the money is still all there.

We threw in a few trips to the beach with Heath's family and E had his first plane ride in October. The first six months he was home, we had to stay in the state of Texas with him, but we stretched it to the limit going from Gainesville to South Padre Island within one week! In 2008, we will head to Colorado for some snow boarding with the Godchildren and to California to catch some sun. We're trying our best to show E as much as we can and are hoping to take him abroad as he gets older.

We've had several friends and family ask about our cousin Scott who stayed with us quite a bit last year. Scott is living with his grandparents and doing great. He continues to grow and each time we see him he surprises us with new skills and talents. He loves music and is finding creative ways to get into every nook and cranny of the house that he isn't suppossed to!

We are supremely blessed with friends and family who have prayed for us and helped us along this journey. Ethan-Stone truly is a child of God, his father in heaven. We feel unworthy of the gift to raise him and watch him grow. The wonderment and joy that he brings to our lives daily is beyond words.

For family pictures, updated regularly, please visit our photo pages at www.chambersadoption.shutterfly.com. The password is ethan-stone (all lower cased, with hyphen).

May God bless you and your family this coming year and always. Merry Christmas and Happy 2008!