Rough Week

Amy and Bill at dinner with us just before we left town.

Hannah and RJ at Boo at the Zoo (RJ refused to dress up but Hannah was a cute bat-princess!)

Well, we have had a rough week. We lost a friend, Bill Kinnish who died unexpectantly at a very young age. He left behind a wife, Amy and a 5 year old little girl, Hannah. We are thinking of Amy and little Hannah daily and they are also in our daily prayers. Another one of my good friends, Mary Buckland also lost her father this week. So our moods seem to go along fine with the cool, dreary weather.

I started my new job this week at Richland. Overall, it is a very nice hospital with very good nurses and friendly people, but it needs a little work in its efficiency! It took me almost 10 to 12 hours a day just to help 15 patients (which is a long time for those of you who don't do this sort of thing on a regular basis). I am missing the big and helpful hospital, and its staff that I left behind in Kansas City, but am sure with time things will get better here.

All my boys (Lance too) seem to be adjusting well. RJ loves his new school and teacher. He says, "Mrs. Brown is nicer than daddy but not quite as nice as mommy!" Jack Jack seems to fit in well at his new daycare as well. He spends 3 days a week there to give Lance a break and some time to look for work and catch up on his Ebay business. They all seem to have more energy than me and it seems hard to find time to keep up with them, and to keep them fed (healthily at least, as was my New Year's Resolution).

We wish you well here from Kennewick, Washington. Drop us a line when you get a chance. We miss all!

Brrrrrrrrrr!

Well, so much for the mild weather here in the tri-cities! I was told it would be great, lows in the 40's and mid-day temps in the 50's. I thought, great, I will be able to run outside even in the middle of the winter (as I am NOT a cold-weather runner if I can avoid it). So far, however, it has been cold, drops to the low 20's and teens at night and it is rare it hits 40 during the day. So miuch for their 300+ days of sunshine a year as well, it was cloudy for the first 2 weeks I got here (can you say SAD?). In fact, right now it is snowing, the third time it has done so in an area that "rarely gets a flake!" So needless to say I have been a little disappointed since my arrival, however, it really isn't much different than it had been in the KC area so it is not a totally new situation.

I even got Jack Jack out to make a snowman for a while, and he seemed to have fun. Neither of my kids much like the cold however, I think it stems from their Thai background, as the coldest it ever gets there is 85 degrees!

Both Lance and I have gotten all new emails and here they are:

lance email: ldbeeson@charter.net

donna email dlbeeson@charter.net

You can email us if you want new address, phone numbers, etc.

Hope all of you are happy and healthy and don't forget us now that we are way out here!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hope the new year is starting out right for one and all. We have officially moved out of Kansas and into Kennewick, WA. Lance and my weekend away was a wash (snowstorm in KC closed airport so that I was delayed for 5 hrs and didn't arrive into Seattle until around 9PM and then Lance's sister's plane and family had trouble and had to fly into Seattle so we had to pick them up the next morning). Oh well, I am sure that we will be able to have a true weekend away soon now that we are so close to family. We had a very nice Christmas though, Lance's sister and her family as well as Lance's mom and grandma were all there. Jack Jack and RJ had a great time with their cousins, Matthew and Nathan. We then got to spend some time in Idaho visiting my family and having a Christmas after a Christmas so it was very nice.

Now I must settle down and start unloading the rest of the boxes, which seems the easy part. The hard part will be trying to find places to put all the stuff that comes out of the boxes. It is already very apparent that we will not have enough room for all of our "stuff". Oh well, it is only stuff and the real important parts, Lance, RJ and Jack Jack fit just fine. It is nice to be so close to family and I hope that the boys will now grow up knowing all of their cousins and the rest of their extended family, which is a luxury I did not have as a child and think is important. Because when push comes to shove, it is really your family and their unconditional love is all that really matters. Hope the Lord continues to bless you and your family as he has ours. Keep in touch, I still do not have a new phone number or email address but I do now know my home address, it is: 99721 Canyon View, Kennewick, WA 99338.

Merry Christmas!

Well, we are officially out of our house in Kansas, sort of. They came and got our cars last Tuesday and we have been driving a small smelly rental since. They packed up all of our stuff on Thursday and loaded the truck on Friday. All of our belongings now reside in Kennewick, WA thanks to a lot of help from Lance's mom. We, however are still here in Kansas, sleeping on the floor and getting a wake up call from Jack Jack about every two hours thanks to his ear infection, and now what I believe to be a bad case of croup. Lance and the boys leave on an early flight tomorrow morning (hopefully Lance will survive the trip!). I have to work this week, as well as clean the house from top to bottom, but will then meet them this weekend before Christmas. Doubt we will have much time to "blog" before then, so I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Celebration

Well, this week has been an eventful one, especially for Jack Jack. He celebrated his adoption finalization by getting circumcised! He has actually done great and had a much easier time of it than RJ did, although to RJ's credit he was almost a year older than Jack Jack is now. Besides a few tears at diaper changing time he seems to have made a full recovery.
We are getting ready for the move, however due to some bad pizza Lance and I spent most of Saturday just laying around and not getting much done, using all of our energy to keep up with the 3 kids we had here Saturday (RJ had his playmate of several years here one more time Friday night and Saturday). We are feeling much better and Lance has gotten a lot of packing done while I mostly watched the kids and got my Christmas cards done. Keep posted, as this week has a lot of changes for our family. The transportation for the car company comes and picks up our cars Tuesday and the movers start packing/moving on Wednesday, all while I am working at one of our most busiest times of year as well as trying to get together with friends in the area for that last time. It should be an interesting week!

IT'S OFFICIAL!!

Well, it took another big event in our life to get me back on my blog. Yesterday, 11/27/07 we made the adoption of our son, Jackson Danai Beeson official! It took all of 10 minutes in front of the judge and cost us another few thousand dollars in lawyers fees but it was worth it, as Jack Jack is officially ours and his name has been officially been changed.

We have had another big event take place since I last wrote as well. We are moving to Washington! Lance was relieved of his coaching duties this past spring (and to quote Forrest Gump, "that is all I am going to say about that!" lest I get myself in trouble with the current MNU football staff.). We decided to use this opportunity to move closer to our families. I found a job that looks very similar to my current one (which I love) in Richland, WA and it is very close to Lance's family, and only 4 hours from mine. I think it will all work out for the best to have the boys close to their extended families so they can get to know and love Grandma, Grandpa and all their cousins (a luxury I did not have growing up).

Wish us luck, our moving adventure starts 12/15/07 and I will try to keep you updated with our experiences, pictures of the boys, and our families so that those who wish to, can keep updated on our lives. I hope you all do the same, make sure you email me with your phone #'s and current email addresses so we can keep in touch!

Another Post Finally!

Well, it only took me a month this time to post another blog. A lot has happened to our family in that short amount of time. We went to Pasco, WA to visit Lance's family. His mother, grandmother and all of his cousins live in Pasco, and actually most of them live within one mile of each other. We had a nice visit and Jack Jack uncharacteristically slept great while we were there (good thing for Mr. Rich, Lance's stepfather, as he was the one who still had to go to work daily!). The kids had a great time and it was very nice to see everybody again. Jack Jack has taken a real liking to his grandma JJ!

I went back to work, and leaving Jack Jack all day almost everyday since has been one of the hardest things I have had to do. He got sick with a bad ear infection almost immediately, most likely because he does not sleep (still!) and is sleep deprived and then you stick him in with a bunch of little human petri dishes in daycare and what do you expect! Luckily, we have a wonderful doctor named Kristi Baker, MD at the Saint Luke's Primary Care (a free plug!) who worked him into her schedule at a very late notice after the daycare called to tell us to pick him up because he had a 103.5 degree fever! 24 hours after the antibiotics and all is well again, except the sleeping part. Lance does much better than I being sleep deprived so he takes most of the early morning duties, but it still wakes me up and I have trouble getting back to sleep. Probably all those years of having to wake up at the sound of my pager that has turned me into such a light sleeper. It is definitely more difficult to concentrate at work when you don't have enough sleep. I have learned that everything is taking me that much longer and I have become much less efficient, not a good thing when you are wanting to get back home to spend time with your kids before they go to sleep. Oh well, things are bound to get better, right? Hopefully my next post will not take a month so stay tuned I am sure there is more drama to come!