Celebrations!

First, the livingroom is finished! We are quite pleased with the way it turned out. James is getting quite skilled at mudding the walls to get them smooth, and I am happy with the way the painting went. The last of the teal trim, inherited when the house was purchased years ago, has now been covered. We both thought Miriam would just walk through the room on her way in, but she surprised us in her delight- mostly just to have the furniture back. At the moment, the only piece on the walls is our marriage certificate above the mantel. We plan to finally frame and hang the family portrait we had taken over a year ago. We're moving very slowly to put things into the room, since we really like the uncluttered, minimalist feel it has now. Okay, so the colors aren't minimalist, but it's uncluttered!

Second, Liza (with her mother's help) has completed her application to attend Brigham Young University next fall. Let me tell you, the international aspects of this project did make it much more complicated. One challenge-her high school guidance counselor was out of school for over two weeks with a family emergency so she couldn't get the recommendation letter sent, and the office held the transcript to send both pieces together-logical. The biggest challenge we had was that BYU, being a church school, requires an ecclesiastical endorsement from the leader of her local congregation. The problem there was that Liza's membership records were in transit for months, so neither the bishop here nor her bishop there "had" her record for close to two months (pending translation, maybe???). Her bishop in Hungary was facing a challenge with the language barrier, and didn't want to do the interview until he had her records in his congregation. Then the interview itself required a translator. And then Liza had to go in to Budapest for the second interview. And by this time, it was too late to trust the mail to get it to Utah before the deadline. FedEx maybe? Not available in their small city. Just fax it, right? Have you ever tried to find a fax machine in a country where you don't speak the language? Then she found someone who tried to fax it for her, but the fax wouldn't go through (because 300 other faxes were trying to come in the same day, maybe?). So they tried emailing it to her dad so he could try, but that didn't go through either. The zip file they sent to me this morning kept shutting down my programs when I tried to open it. So a second email came with unzipped pictures, but I couldn't get them copied into a document to fax. A call to the Admissions office revealed that they could accept them via email- which I already had in hand, and the wonderfully helpful young lady who took my call even watched for my email, and sent a reply when it got there. Thanks, Andrea! Success!- with 35+ hours to spare.

Lesson learned: If either of the twins decide to go overseas prior to completing their college applications, they will have their test scores sent to BYU, Univ. of Maryland, and any other schools they are considering AND they will complete their ecclesiastical endorsement for BYU before they leave! (Love you, Liza!)

Third: Samuel appears to have pulled off another marking period of straight A's. He's certainly determined to earn that laptop! We had a bit of drama yesterday-first, elation when he showed off the midterm with the grade high enough to preserve his precarious A in Geometry (precarious after he "blew off" a quiz-learned that lesson pretty quickly), and then meltdown when he realized he forgot to turn in his band practice sheet-thereby placing his A in band in jeopardy. An email to his teacher revealed that his grade otherwise was high enough that he squeaked an A even without that, but the teacher wanted to see the practice sheet anyway. Impressive, son! Several lessons learned and strategies created to prevent a repeat of this experience. We're quite proud of Samuel's determination and efforts.

Fourth: We received word Saturday that Miriam's Christmas orphan from AHOPE , an orphanage in Ethiopia for children who are HIV+, is being adopted, and will be coming to the US. Miriam now has a new child sponsored in her name. It is such a pleasure to be able to make our small difference in these children's lives.

Fifth: Tori has a new job, doing clerical work for a construction and home improvement firm in Baltimore. It could be closer to home, but she's thrilled to be looking forward to reliable income, and they're working around her Tuesday evening class schedule. At this point she plans to continue with the waitressing on her days off from the other job. She's looking forward to visiting Liza in Hungary after the semester ends.