Merry Christmas!

OK, so I'm little late. We have dial-up, what can I say. More about that at the end of this post.

Let me add to my last post that not only did we have an ice storm on the day of our wedding, but one of my groomsman came down with a sudden case of diarhea-- right before the guys were supposed to enter the sanctuary. Thankfully we had a good pianist who covered for us while he ran to the bathroom.

My Christmas present is that my mom came down from Maryland for Christmas and my brother is coming tomorrow. Jadyn and Bryn were the perfect age for Christmas this year-- they were just as excited about putting presents under the tree from packages as they were about opening them Christmas day. Jess did a wonderful job assisting Santa via Ebay as she found a stuffed kitten for Bryn. The thing is Bryn had made a stuffed kitten at Build-a-Bear but it went away during one of the girls' Give-Away/Throw-Away days. Well, Bryn asked Santa to bring the kitten back, and we were in a quandry as #1 it was the only thing she asked for and #2 Build-a-Bear no longer makes this particular stuffed animal. Jess did a marvelous job of finding one and having it shipped just in time for Christmas. We almost a scare though when Bryn looked sadly at the kitten and said unlike her last kitten "It doesn't meow." However, after I frantically squezed, punched, prodded, and trampled the kitten that it does indeed meow--just for some reason-- the noise maker is in the kitten's thigh. I have a new favorite Bryn line-- courtesy of Christmas day. She was very excited about getting a Dora scooter from Santa-- she hadn't asked Santa for it. With a big smile on her face she turned to me and said, "Daddy... I didn't even order it!"

Jess has a treatment this week on Thursday-- no Christmas break for her. I think the new laptop she bought last week with her birthday money (back in September) and the DSL we are getting (for cheaper than our current phone bill) will cheer her up. Oh yeah, and there is the fact that hundreds (if not thousands of people) pray for her-- that's a pretty good Christams present. Merry Christmas!

Joyful Days

Today is Jess and my 8 year anniversary. Tonight we are going to dine in high style at Three Forks restaraunt. Even the gift card we got to there is classy-- it's a huge gold-colored coin. I think of our wedding as one that almost didn't happen. First of all our minister, Barbara, found out she had breast cancer and started undergoing chemo therapy. It seemed to me that she wouldn't have the strength to perform our wedding, but she did complete with wig and a smile on her face. Then, Jess rear-ended someone on the way to the wedding, crumpling the front end of her now barely driveable car. Amazingly, when the other car found out she was going to her wedding they started appologizing to her. There's further proof I have a charming wife. As for me, my alternator went out in my car and my best friend and I were stranded on I-35 in Dallas. We wouldn't have made it except Aunt Sandy spotted us and gave us a lift. I guess you could say that we have been dealing with adversity from the beginning.

The thing about adversity though is that God raises people to support you. Last year at our faculty Christmas party, Pat Cooper announced that the YJH staff had raised money for a new mattress (Jessa wasn't sleeping well because of back pain). However, when went to go buy one, Matress Giant decided to give a great matress to us so that we could use the money raised for other things. I'm getting tears in my eyes just thinking about all those caring people. Would you believe the YJH faculty did it again this year? The staff and teachers are very good at keeping secrets-- I had no idea they would do it again last year. The hard thing for me is that I will never be able to outgive those loving people there.

Jess is having her next scan for January 18th. We were trying to get in before the end of the year, so that it wouldn't cost having already met the maximum amount on our insurance. However, when they scheduled it for next year Jess quickly pointed out that each infusion which she gets every two weeks are $5,000.

The neatest thing happened to the Curtis family. A teacher at Wood submitted Aunt Jaque's name to KLTY's (a local radio station) Christmas Wish. If you don't know we lost a fabulous uncle, but Jaque lost a husband when James passed away recently. Well, Jacque's roof has been leaking and her fence is in need of repair. KLTY matched her wish with a local, generous family. The donor lost both parents when she was a child. Now she is donating a new roof and a new fence to the Curtis family. What a blessing.

Busy Bees

I don't know if it's the same thing in your family or not but for us as Christmas approaches we are in "hurry up and rest" mode. I think every activity/school/organization our kids are in has scheduled an end of the year program. I didn't realize how long it had been since we had last posted until both my principal and a fellow teacher told me they were tired of seeing the fall picture and could pretty much recite the last post. Oops, I guess I need to post more. Jess had an appointment today but as she and I have been moving in opposite directions today I only know two things about it. First she forgot her Emla (sp?) Cream. This is the stuff she puts on her skin before they inject the mega-needle for her infusions. For Jess, it is the difference between Wild Natives of Australia running at her and thrusting a spear into her flesh and getting a normal shot. She prefers for it to feel like a normal shot, so she was really, really sad that she didn't have it. Second, her appointment took long enough that she had to endure Dallas bumper-to-bumper traffic. Today could have been a really stressful today except that some precious people did things like pick up our kids, drop them off, fix our car's headlights, and bring us a meal (plus bannana bread). What an awesome church family we have. I think that our Yikes (younger Kaylor kids-- I decided today that when they get to be teenagers I'm going to start calling them Yaks) are getting more hilarious with each today. Today, they started talking about their grandparents and how much they like them. Only their grandparents have temporarily lost their names; today they were referred to as the grandma with a dog (Grandma Cindy), the grandma with Jadyn's color of eyes (Grandma Satterlee), etc. However, my favorite one was the grandpa with hair that looks ALMOST blond... hmmmm... would that be white? I'm not going to say which one that was. Also, I think the girls have noticed the way Jess and I handle things when they get stressed out because somethings wrong-- we usually let them know will try to fix it by saying, "I'll handle it." Well today, the Yikes we're supposed to have cleaned up and the living room looked like it might have been, but then I looked behind the couch. Without missing a beat, Bryn looked right at me and said, "I'll handle it." Then she asked, "What does that mean?"