Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all... we have so much in our family to be truly thankful for! We hope that all of our friends and family have a beautiful day appreciating all the many blessings God has given them as well.

Changes are hard

Nothing much is going on today. I had an emotional week. I turned in my resignation at the gym. My last day will be December 15. Most of the staff knew I was planning to leave due to the upcoming adoption, and also to free up some time to get Anna to and from her after school activities. It was just a matter of making a decision as to "when". I thought after the state meet would be a good time... but I am so sad! And I made little girls cry! I know it will be for the best in the long run, but changes are always hard for me. It is a great job and a wonderful part of my life. I will miss all of my little girls so much. So sad... :(

Miscellaneous News

In other, less exciting news, we got second place at our meet this weekend. Sigh. I had dreams of grandeur there for a while, imagining a glorious undefeated season to cap off this portion of my illustrious coaching career. Unfortunately, the balance beam had other plans for us. Still, I'm proud of my girls as always. And as I was reminded by Isabel, all of the girls got a trophy, and trophies are really fun.

Emily got the one extra point she needed on her ACT to boost her scholarship money up to $7,000 per year when she starts at Iowa State next year. Way to go Emily!

Anna and I had mother-daughter migraines today, but we are both feeling better now.

No major updates for Kenneth. Tom is in California.

No animals are sick. No cars are in need of repair. All is peaceful at the Spears household.

DTE!!!

That means "Dossier to Ethiopia" and what that means is that we are now officially waiting for a referral for our new little daughter. This is "official" waiting, as opposed to the unofficial waiting we were doing before. :)

Oh, happy day! Praying for a relatively short wait...

We're 2 and 0!

My gymnastics team, Premier Gymnastics Level 4, had their second meet of the season today. We got first place again with a fabulous score of 113.05, ahead of the second place team by .065. All of the girls were great today, but I would like to recognize and congratulate my top scoring girls in each event: Vault, Sarah L. 9.75 (highest individual score of the meet!); Bars, Brooke S. 9.3; Beam, Alexis H. and Brooke S. 9.5; and Floor, Madeline W. 9.55.

I'm very proud of the entire team and I'm looking forward to our next meet!

Lady bug, lady bug fly away home

My house is inundated with these little lady bugs. More accurately, I believe they are called Asian beetles. They were purportedly imported into the United States some years ago to control pests in soy bean fields. The local wisdom is that the soy bean harvest drives them out of the bean fields and into the houses of poor unsuspecting homeowners. Now they are pests in Midwestern houses. We have hundreds of them in our house. Every day I clean up their little bug carcasses, and the next day there are a zillion more. This photo is of one of the little beauties posing in a bowl of gourds on my kitchen counter. Sure, they're pretty, but they also bite! May they all die soon. RIP.

It's in DC!

Our dossier was sent to the courier in Washington, DC yesterday for authentication at the State Department. We are getting closer...

Just because they're cute

I'm putting these pictures of my pets up because they were victims of the accidental deletion. They're so darn cute and lovable that they deserve a spot on my blog. My doggies are Bridget, Bobby and Bruno. They are shown here cuddling in their dog cabinet, which is a crate I had built into our kitchen cabinets.

In the second picture, Bridget is lazing around with our two cats, Lucy (the black one) and Harry.

Here we are again!

Okay, so like an idiot, I somehow managed to delete an entire category of posts from my blog... all of the ones marked "family". Sorry family. :( So I'm going to repost some of the stuff.

We are the Spears family...Tom, Paula and our three teenage children Kenneth, Emily and Anna. We live in a rural area of Nebraska, near Omaha. We just moved here about 10 months ago after living in the suburbs of west Omaha for 10 years. We love our new house on the lake and all it's wildlife, but it is quite inconvenient in many ways and has been a big adjustment.

Some of the family interests are church, pets, marathon running, taekwondo, gymnastics, diving, reading, video games, cheerleading, shopping, jet-skiing and fishing. We don't all enjoy each of these activities equally. :)

I am a part-time gymnastics coach and a full-time mom. I'm thinking I should add some additional computer training into my list of interests so that I don't delete anything else.

Sigh. What an idiot.

Ack! I deleted a bunch of posts!

I just accidentally deleted about half of my posts. Major tears! If anyone knows how to get them back, please tell me.

A bad day for Emily

My poor baby. As you may know, we are a gymnastics family. I am a coach, and both of my daughters are or have been gymnasts. (Tom and Kenneth get quite tired of gymnastics conversations.) Anna quit in February after sustaining several broken bones in her hand/arm: she's dislocated an elbow (required a cast), broken a finger and hand bone (required a cast), broken her thumb (required a cast) and the final straw was a stress fracture in her wrist just one week after getting a cast removed. So she moved on to high school cheerleading and diving and is very happy.

Emily, however, is sticking it out for one last year of competition before going to college next fall. Today was a "show day" at Premier; a deadline day for the optional gymnasts to demonstrate certain skills for the upcoming meet season. Alas, while warming up her front tumbling pass, Emily managed to roll both ankles. After a couple of hours in the ER, the verdict is a nasty sprain of her right ankle; at least there is nothing broken and no cast required. But my girl is on crutches for the week and who knows how long it will take to get the ankle back to full strength? She now has two bad ankles... Her first meet is New Year's weekend and includes a much anticipated New Year's Eve trip to Times Square in NYC. So please say a quick prayer that Emily will heal well and quickly. She's worked so hard for almost six years!