Christmas in September?

We are dreaming of a white Christmas! I know this is either 3 months early or it is 3months late (if you like Christmas in July), but you can celebrate the birth of our Lord at any time right? Besides Christmas has become a theme of conversation at our house recently. I think that is mostly because we have decided to go home for Christmas this year. There are many reasons for this: the holidays tend to be one of the hardest times on the boys to be away from their extended family being one and another is that Cole needs to have his orthotics replaced. He really should have had them adjusted or replaced last summer, but we thought that if we could stretch the time out to a year and a half than it would only be another year and a half until we come home at the end of our term. (It is hard to believe that our term is more than half over.) I hope that we made the right decision on waiting to replace Cole’s orthotics, they still seem to fit length wise, but I am beginning to wonder if they aren’t a little too narrow now. I am also looking forward to replacing Ben’s glasses with ones that hopefully won’t have to be repaired on a weekly basis, although I must say Dave is becoming pretty good at putting the piece back together. I am just not sure whether they break because of Ben’s treatment of them, Dave’s repair jobs or just because they are like many things here—cheap and not meant to last. I suspect it is a combination of all of the above.

We also decided with this trip to make a detour to New Brunswick. Dave’s mom and dad are in Moncton and the boys have been asking a lot of questions about what it is like there because they haven’t been there since they were babies. It makes the logistics of this trip a little more complicated to fly to Ontario and then New Brunswick and back to Ontario, but we are hoping that it gives the boys a little more understanding of their roots, by seeing where their dad spent some of his growing up years and to be able to picture Grandma and Grandpa Wright in their context. (Because Dave’s brothers are in Ontario not too far from where my family is, his mom and dad have usually come to visit us there.)

For now our schedule looks like this:
Dec. 14 about 22 hours in transit between Niamey and Toronto
Dec. 15-17 Doctors’ appointments in Ontario
Dec. 17-23 Moncton, New Brunswick
Dec. 23-Jan.6 Back to Ontario for Christmas and more doctors’ appointments

Please pray for us that all the details will come together, that we will be able to afford the orthotics and glasses and that we will be able to make arrangements for a vehicle especially in Ontario (my parents will be flying home from Florida to spend Christmas with us, but their vehicle will be in Florida!). Pray that this will be a time to rest and relax because we could all really use a vacation. Finally pray especially for the boys, that this might alleviate some of the “family-sickness” that they have been experiencing over the last few months.