Greetings To All:
Happy belated Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas to all! How in the wide world are you? We are doing well. Since we arrived back in the states and recovered from jetlag we have been busy, yet not. Make sense? For Thanksgiving we shared bird and lamb with Mike and Nikki Beachy, who hosted, and other transients on the base. Our contributions to the meal were corn casserole, sweet potato casserole, and pumpkin cheesecake casserole. Well, the cheesecake wasn't a casserole. Everyone had a good meal and fellowship. A couple of days later Kathy requested that I make another cheesecake for her and a friend of ours that didn't make it to the meal. After setting aside slices for them I allowed others on the base to help themselves. It didn't last longer than two days. Don't worry, some of you will get to experience the wonderful sensation and experience that is the cheesecake. Lynette S. I have a special slice just for you.
What else have we been doing? Leaves. Lots of leaves to rake and pick up. Despite my natural aversion to such activity I pitched in. I've been volunteering for the past couple of weeks with the base maintenance crew, which is minimal right now. I've done some other things for them besides just raking leaves. Kathy helped in the kitchen with some holiday baking. She also recruited our guest for the week, Lynette Miller, to help with that. They both had a blast. The two of them took a morning to go to Silver Falls State Park. Included are some pictures of that trip. Dakota has been having fun going to the classroom for "school" with Mary. She really enjoys playing there with a couple of other children of staff. She does miss Drew Beachy who is in China right now. "Play Drew," are some of the first words she says in the day. Oh, Dakota is also busy getting aquainted with the potty. Twice now she has gone peepee on the big potty! She was duly rewarded. I'm sure she will be glad to know some day that her daddy mentioned that on the world wide web.
So this Saturday we will be in IN. We will get to see some of you who are reading this. Late Saturday night is when we will actually arrive at my folks' place, which is where we will be staying. Normally I would comment on the difference in weather at this point, but we will be shivering right there with you. Here in Salem it is getting colder, but the highs have still been in the high 40s to low 50s. That's nice.
Our thougths and prayers have been on our future. Most of you have gotten our latest newsletter by now. Our hopes are still to move to Beijing in late February, and we are doing what we can to move towards that. Please join us in prayer and support during this time. We also look forward to hearing what your lives have been like in the past 6.5 months. In a short while we can discuss life and dreams over a hot cup of coffee together. For this entry I feel it is appropriate to end with: see you later.
God's Blessings To You,
Carson, Kathy, Dakota
