A Country Christmas and Six-Months Home

The term Country Christmas embodies all of the beauty and sentimental notions and longings I have about the Christmas season. 

I have visions of rustic barns amid snow-covered fields, 

handmade gifts, 

hospitality, 

and decorations that bring the outdoors in. 

But like all idealized things, perpetuated by Pinterest and blogs, snapshots and songs, the season can never fully live up to the ideal. We have the barn, but nary a flake of snow, and I only managed to finish two knit dishcloths for one friend. We felt busy and tired, and at times, grumpy and dull. However, the season was still beautiful and warm, and best of all, real. 

Friends and family gathered, 

our fire blazed warm and bright (even if it is propane), 

we had quiet moments of reflection (at least one that I can remember),

 

moments of excitement and chaos (many, many more of those),

but most importantly, Jesus was celebrated. 

The greatest miracle of all time is that God so loves us and so desires to redeem us that He sent his Son, who is fully God, to put on a mantle of flesh and dwell with us, the Word made flesh, God With Us, Immanuel. 

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: 

The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, 

and will call him Immanuel.

~Isaiah 7:14

The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, 

and they will call him Immanuel (which means “God with us”).

~Matthew 1:23

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. 

We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, 

who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

~John 1:14

Since Christmas Day is for celebrating miracles, it seems fitting that also on this day we celebrated six-months home with Graham Jeffrey. He woke up a little grumpy, but soon warmed up.

Caleb and I were profoundly struck by how many stockings hung from our mantel this year.  (That, and the fact that we are profoundly outnumbered.) What a sweet love this little boy is. Graham has blended right into our family as though that spot was just waiting for him. I believe it was. He is smart, sweet, funny, and mellow (a welcome trait in a fifth child, particularly a child that follows our Firecracker Rosie). He has grown and changed so much and is finding his two year-old will and voice, which I often must remind myself is good and healthy.  

Next week, new animals are being delivered to our farm and seed catalogs are already arriving in the mail. The hope and promise of a New Year await. 

Go Local

He who gathers in summer is a son who acts wisely, 

but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who acts shamefully.

~Proverbs 10:5 

One blessing of living in this lush, fertile valley is that whatever we don't grow ourselves, due to lack of space, lack of energy, or a failed crop, is almost always available locally. We have been unsuccessful with blueberries. We will keep trying, but in the meantime, one mile down the road from our house is a blueberry farm where we picked 45 pounds of blueberries this summer. I froze them on cookie sheets and then loaded them into gallon ziplock bags. We will eat them in smoothies, pancakes, and as a plain frozen snack all year long. 

Our strawberries completely failed this year, whereas last year we had a bountiful crop: plenty to eat, plenty to can, and some to freeze. (We have some work to do this winter to get them going again.) Fortunately, we were able to pick at a farm a short drive from us and freeze 20 pounds for the coming year. 

We would like to plant peach trees, but have not yet, so are at least several years out from having our own peaches. Every summer we drive twenty minutes to a local farm and pick by the basketful. 

This year we left with 65 pounds. I canned a bit of peach jam, we made homemade peach ice cream, and ate many plain. But the majority I sliced and froze, with skins on (hate to peel off all those nutrients), to be used in smoothies throughout the year. 

Our favorite smoothie recipe (I triple it for the kids and I):

1 banana
1 sliced peach
1 cup blueberries
1/4 cup plain greek yogurt
1/2 scoop vanilla whey protein powder
1 Tbs almond butter
Almond milk as needed to thin if fruit is frozen

Graham ate his first peach here and is definitely a fan!

At the peach farm, in this very rural location, I was surprised to see an Asian woman on the little wagon taking us out to the orchard. (The orchard owners tired of cars running over their irrigation pipes and so require us to be transported.) She kept staring at us and smiling and I was fairly certain she was Chinese. When we got off at the same stop to pick the same variety of peaches she asked if my children were Chinese. I told her they were and then she hugged me and said, "Thank you." She had a thick accent, but her English was good. We proceeded to have a pleasant conversation in which I discovered she has been here in the States for 6 years and married an American. She hugged me and thanked me no less than three times in our short five-minute conversation. I stressed what a blessing our Chinese children are to us, but she was clearly moved by what we had done. I am always equally moved when Chinese people, who truly understand the desperate plight of the Chinese orphan, share their feelings about our adoptions with us. I believe this moment in a peach orchard in rural Oregon was a sweetly ordained moment by God. 

Though we have six apple trees, we had a very small crop this year. The two that appear to be Gravensteins have only every borne a few apples each season, and the other four (two Golden Delicious and two Red Delicious) were either not pruned enough, pruned too much, or pruned too late in the season. I could tell by the scarcity of blossoms in Spring that we would not have many apples. We also did not follow the prescribed organic spray schedule as we had planned to, so the majority of the apples we did grow were scabby and wormy. Biting into one them was like a game of russian roulette. I would not recommend it. I was able to cut away the yuck and make a fair amount of apple butter, and a few of our Golden Delicious were beautiful for eating. But for the remaining dozens of quarts of applesauce and pints of apple butter, we returned to a place we had not been in a few years: our favorite apple farm, Beilke Family Farms.   

We picked about 70 pounds of Gala, Fuji, and Granny Smith. They were gorgeous. I'd risk biting into one of those any day!  

Last weekend, I got to work, after a welcome month-long break from canning:

I don't think I can adequately express how much of a joy canning on my new stove is, compared to my old, small, ceramic-top stove with a broken large burner, where it would take an hour just to bring my pot to boil.

I wrote last year about my favorite applesauce and apple butter method and recipes and also about the amazing Kitchenaid attachment that makes perfectly textured applesauce. 

We feed the apple scraps to the cows and goats and it feels very satisfying to know absolutely nothing is going to waste. 

I had several quarts of applesauce left from last year, but I opened the last apple butter in July. We shall now make it through another year!

We are very thankful to live in a place where we can so easily live out our beliefs that it is best to buy local, both to support the local economy and also to buy food with the highest nutritional quality (so much is lost during transport and on store shelves) from people who we know are farming their land responsibly. In our VERY modest foray into growing our own (both plants and animals), we are in awe of people who do this for a living. We love Oregon and our local farmers!

                                                                                              

China in Two Blog Posts... Part II

When I left off in my first post we had just received Graham, who was so solemn and reserved it broke my heart. Sometime the next day Britton coaxed the first smile from him. He absolutely loves Britton and having him on the trip with us certainly helped ease Graham's transition. 

Guangzhou

Graham's first flight

The American Consulate in China is in Guangzhou in South Eastern China, just across the water from Hong Kong. All American families must stay there a week to complete Visa paperwork and a medical exam. As I mentioned in my last post, we had two fewer days in Graham's province than usual and two extra days in Guangzhou. This meant we were leaving on a plane with Graham less than 48 hours after we met him. Thankfully, he did great on the flight, mostly because he was still so tentative, reserved, and unsure of us that he sat still, flipped through a book and ate snacks. He had certainly "found his voice" by the time we travelled home. 

Guangzhou is a pleasant, heavily western influenced, tropical city, and we had a lot of time in between our fixed appointments to explore. The heat and humidity were stifling (95 degrees with 90% humidity) but we tried to be troopers. Graham continued to warm up to us and we saw glimpses of his playful personality. Here is a sampling of how we passed our eight days:

Attending Graham's medical exam

Visiting the most amazing zoo we've
 ever been to

Introducing Graham to McDonald's (which we
never eat at home, but I must admit,
tasted pretty good half a world away).

Bonding with Graham

Swimming

Strolling around

Working hard for smiles

Visiting the best Starbucks in the world
(a renovated British Colonial Building on Shamian Island)

Doing "real life" stuff (We needed a stroller and other necessities.) 

Taking a river cruise with the 20 other Holt families

The time passed quickly and enjoyably, though we were definitely ready to head home at the appointed time! 

Inspiration

Our Holt adoption group 

Aside from meeting our son, the highlight of the trip for me was watching the stories unfold around us. I kept thinking of Psalm 68:6: God sets the lonely in families. In our group alone, I saw twenty orphans become sons and daughters. I'm tearing up just writing that. I witnessed families welcome long awaited first children, long-awaited second children, long-awaited first daughters, and a few families like ours that were welcoming a younger sibling with many older siblings. Many of these children have significant medical needs. One child will likely need a heart transplant. One child is missing both his hands and feet. One child is deaf and his new family has spent the past several months learning sign language. He had never had a way to communicate and after meeting his new family he eagerly pointed to every object in sight wanting to learn the sign for what he was seeing. Several little girls had cleft lip and palate which brought all kinds of emotions, reminding me of Rosie. The reality is that these children have little hope and bleak futures in China. But each of these adoptive families saw that these beautiful children have worth and wanted to give them a home where they could grow and thrive and be loved. God bless you all.   

Home Sweet Home

Three weeks home and we're doing amazingly well. Watching Graham get to know his siblings, begin to understand that we are his people, and become comfortable in his new surroundings has been heart warming. He was terrified of our dogs and chickens (hysterical crying anytime they were in sight) but within three days began petting them. He is seeking out interaction with me and fussing sometimes when I leave the room. (Yay for attachment!) He has many English words already and understands almost all that we say to him. We see more smiles from him every day, though I do think he has a cautious and reserved nature. God has answered every single prayer and worry and fear with His faithfulness. The biggest blessing this time around has been perspective. I understand the journey better, and it is a journey. When I reflect on how far Rosie had come in two years, how far I have come in two years, I understand that this is only the very beginning opening paragraph of Graham's story. And we all still have so much growing and changing and learning to do. But thankfully there is Joy in the Journey. 

How did I get to be these amazing kids' Mom?

Brother time

The Williams 5

China in Two Blog Posts...Part I

We have been home as a family of seven for two weeks. I didn't blog while in China because I wanted to have time to reflect and collect my thoughts before sharing. It can be difficult to have perspective in the middle of an experience. I also find it tricky to blog about adoption in a way that shares the excitement of the miracle but preserves the privacy and dignity of my adopted children and of our family. Many details are theirs alone to share (or not) as they choose in the future. Also, please know that if I don't share hard things, it doesn't mean they aren't there. "Snapshots of Life" is in my blog title. Who takes snapshots of their child screaming bloody murder on a plane for an hour? (I was too busy crying and have subsequently tried to erase that hour from my mind.) If I am speaking to you personally, I am happy to share the hard stuff, but I don't use this forum for too much of that. This is the GOOD stuff! I really tried to keep it to one blog post, but for goodness sake, I used two posts for adding goats to our farm, so I figure Graham deserves at least that. And there is just too much GOOD stuff! So bear with me, Friends.

Beijing

The part of the wall across the road was 
very crowded so we came over here and 
had the wall to ourselves. 

Caleb and I probably would not have done sight-seeing in Beijing this time if we had not had Britton with us. But it was so much fun having him there! Last time it was winter and there was not a stick of green anywhere. We found the city much more appealing this time. We were also blessed with incredibly good weather (mid 70s, whereas it had been in the mid 90s for weeks) and incredibly rare air quality. No one was wearing masks, which is nearly unheard of. Thank you, Lord!

Highlights of our two days:  
*The Great Wall
*Jade factory
*Pedicab ride through a historic Hutong lane
*Kung Fu show
*Tiananmen Square and The Forbidden City
*Silk factory
*Amazing lunch at a local restaurant
*Traditional Peking Duck dinner 
*Night Market 

Pedicab ride through a Hutong lane

Tiananmen Square

All sorts of creepy-crawlies at the Night Market
available for consumption. We selected scorpions.

Below is a video of Britton eating his scorpion. You will also witness me dropping mine because it appeared to move. I contend it did. For the record, we bought another skewer and I did eat one, as did Caleb. 

Nanjing

Can you tell I want to throw up
from nerves?

Nanjing is a beautiful former national capital city on the Yangtze River, and now the capital of Jiangsu province where Graham is from. Unfortunately, due to a Chinese holiday, we had two less days there than usual and two more days in Guangzhou at the end of the trip, so we had almost no time for sightseeing. June 15, 2015, is the day we met Graham, but not until 2 pm. I was feeling very nervous. We distracted ourselves by crossing the street to the Confucius Temple, which is one of a handful in China devoted to his memory. It was a maze of well-kept old buildings turned into shops and a very pleasant place to stroll around. Britton had some souvenir money absolutely burning a hole in his pocket and thankfully, he was able to make a purchase: a Chinese instrument called a Hulusi. After three years of tin whistle at Classical Conversations, Britton was able to seamlessly transition to the Hulusi. (I can hardly type this with a straight face. The Hulusi is like a tin whistle + nails on a chalk board. And we shared a hotel room for two weeks.)  

Britton haggled like a pro with this shop keeper. 

Brit's selfie with Confucius

Forever Family Day

This picture pretty much sums up how 
Graham felt about us at first.

Five families with our agency, Holt, and three Dutch families with another agency, all met their children at the same time and location. Graham was the last to arrive. He was led in by the orphanage director and his favorite caregiver was waiting in the wings. He let me pick him up but was very tentative and serious. Eventually his caregiver came over and put out her hands to him and he gladly went to her. I was wishing she had not done that because I could see it was going to be hard for him to come back to me. But as I saw her nuzzle him and kiss him and wipe away her own tears, I realized that my prayers had been answered. He had been loved and I was so, so grateful. I could never begrudge her a final goodbye. Thank you Yuan Nai Nai (Grandma Yuan) for loving my boy. He did cry when he returned to me, but it was a stoic, controlled cry. He stopped and started three times in the 90 minutes we were there. And then he's never cried (apart from fussing at bed time and the aforementioned incident on the plane where he was completely exhausted) again. 

My sad, terrified boy. It was heartbreaking,
but he bore it so well.

Snacks were key to helping him calm down.

The first night we got him in jammies, ordered room service (he loved pizza and french fries!), watched some TV, and he slept 12 hours straight, holding a Matchbox car in each hand. Sweet, emotionally exhausted boy.  

The next day we returned to sign papers and make the adoption official. The orphanage director gave us a gift, a beautiful plate with the name of Graham's city on it. She also gave us her contact information and asked us to send updates on him. She said she would like to send us all of the pictures she has of Graham. She proceeded to scroll through her phone and showed us many pictures of him with his friends. I could see how deeply she cares for the children, and as I've gotten to know Graham more and witness how emotionally healthy he is, I am certain that he was in a very loving place. Through an interpreter, I feebly attempted to thank her for taking care of our son until we could get to him. I could scarcely get the words out for the lump in my throat. She said that it was her job to take care of him. I could see though that it was more than a job to her, and I can't thank God enough for answering this Mother's prayers. 

Part II: Guangzhou, our amazing adoption group, and HOME SWEET HOME!