Winter Visits Once Again

Hello to all family and friends. It has been a month or better since our last post, so I will try to bring everyone up to date with our family's happenings.

To begin with, once again we woke this morning to an inch of snow. Not a surprise since it was forecast, but a pleasant experience. Sara's school is on a snow, two-hour delay and the local TV and radio stations are all warning drivers to be careful. This makes the third significant snow fall this year, and that's allot for our area. Snow is not an every winter occurrence here in the valley of the Columbia and Willamette rivers. Of course the high mountains all around, St. Helens, Mounts Baker, Adams and Hood, all get beautifully white every winter. And we depend on a heavy mountain snow pack for spring and summer runoff. But in the valley we don't always get snow. So this has been either real pleasant or a pain in the backside, whichever perspective you choose. For our family we are enjoying every flake, and wish every winter was such.

Well Sara's broken arm and cast are history. She had to wear a brace for a number of weeks following the cast coming off, but that's over with now too, and she is back to normal. All is healed just fine. And that is a good thing because they wouldn't let her play in the basketball games with her cast or her brace. Yes, Sara is a basketball player this year! She is playing in a league for 4th and 5th grade girls and enjoying it whole lot. And she and the team are learning and improving with each week. She has practice two evenings a week for an hour and then they have a game each Saturday morning. The first game Sara got already to play, wearing her black BB shorts and her orange jersey, and when she joined the team on the court before the game her coach told her she could not play with a brace on her arm. She was so disappointed and downcast. But she took it well and as I said that is all history now, and she is team member and plays with all the other girls. The basketball season runs through the end of February, so she has several more games and then it is over. But she is signed up for baseball next and that promises to be just as interesting. :)

Many of you know that our family has made application to become foster parents. It is quite a lengthy process, with required training meetings, a mountain of paperwork, modifications to our home to accommodate others, and an extensive background check. But the good news is that the process begun last fall is now complete, and we wait news any day of our official certification. Once we receive that then it is a matter of waiting to see what child or children we are given the opportunity to open our home and hearts to. We are praying as a family that God would bring just the right child or children into our family that we might love and care and provide for them. It saddens and breaks the heart to hear about and see some of the circumstances that children are exposed to prior to their being taken into care. We hope we can provide a loving, safe, secure and positive home environment to help some children on their way in this hard world. We would ask you to pray with us for this challenging venture, that our gracious and wonderful God will enable us, and that he would accomplish a good work in and through us to his glory.

As I write this word has come that school is now closed today! Wow, Sara is excited. It is sledding time. We live on a great hill for sledding and tubing, and she is dressing to the challenge and adventure. Ahhh to be ten and have school closed because of glorious ssssssnowwww!!

Walt for the three of us.