Outgoing Mail

How sad- another week without letters! Since I don't have any letters from our kids to share, I'll tell you a bit about the letters I've sent the past few weeks.

Last week, I wrote to our kids and told them about Anell's homecoming. I have been sharing my excitement about this little boy with my kids for a while. I have told them in the past that my friend and her husband were adopting, and asked them to pray for them. So in last week's letter, I told them that Anell is now in the United States with his mom and dad, and sent them a picture. I told them that scripture tells us when we become Christians, we are adopted by God, and we are His sons and daughters- and that our inheritance is heaven!

This week I'm doing hand-written letters, since it's early in the month. This month's letters are kind of short, and focus on two main topics. In my intro paragraph, I tell my kids that I would love to learn more about their families. I ask them if they have any brothers and sisters, what their names are, and how old they are. I decided to go ahead and ask everyone for this info for a few reasons. One is that there has been some confusion about the names of some of my kids' siblings, or how many they have (like Tasya only has one sister, but over the years, I've heard two different names for her. It is totally possible that she goes by a middle name- after all, Tasya's name is actually Renica Natasya!) Secondly, some of my newer correspondence kids have skipped the introductory form letter, so I've missed out on some of that basic information. I really do want to know the details about my kids' families, but I also want to know more specifically about Tasya's and Prayer's families, since hopefully I will be meeting these two beautiful children next year!!

In the second part of my letter, I told the kids about our summer reading finale at the library. I have mentioned summer reading several times in my letters these past few months, telling my kids how important (and fun!) reading is. This is the last week of summer reading at our library, so each of the branches is having a party on Saturday. I told my kids a little bit about how we'd celebrate- with lots of games, some crafts, face-painting, and popcorn and snow cones (which I referred to as "flavored ice.") I told them that the library will be very busy that day, but I know it's a lot of fun for the kids, and I'm glad that we do it. I told them that when I was little, I loved to come to the library for the end of summer reading, but these past 8 years I have been working there instead! I still get a snow cone, though. : )

I tried to think of library-themed stuff I could send to my kids, but couldn't come up with anything off the top of my head, so they're getting Louisville postcards instead. When we went to the airport for Anell's welcome home celebration, I made sure to stop by the gift shop and stock up on postcards! The selection has dwindled since the last time I was there, but I still got three postcards for each kid, I think. I got some with the Louisville skyline, some that featured horse farms (the ones with the foals on them are super cute!), a few featuring the Louisville Slugger museum and the giant bat for some of the boys, and some others!

What kind of letters have you been sending lately? I'm looking forward to the upcoming change of seasons- I feel like so many of my letters this summer have either been about the library (Tasya says I'm "always there") and the heat! I guess it's because summer is my least favorite season- I'm more enthusiastic about fall and winter, and there's more family stuff going on then, too!