Highlights from Eliza's birthday--turn on your speakers!

Make a free ecard - it's easy!

Eliza update 1/27/08--anticipating birthday #2!

Dear family and friends,

Tuesday fast approaches, and with it all the mixed
emotions associated with Eliza's birthday: first among
them awe and gratitude that she's with us to celebrate
#2, but not untinged with sadness, exhaustion,
frustration, uncertainty...how do you celebrate this
kind of milestone? No, we're not planning a big bash
like last year; though that day was just about
perfect, trying to recreate it would somehow tarnish
the memory, I think (and maybe kill us in the
process!).

No, for Luke's sake we'll eat cake and give Eliza some
small gifts, and we plan to have a family portrait
taken next weekend to commemorate the day. Otherwise,
it'll be a regular day--Luke and Sam to school, Eliza
doing physical therapy--and we'll hope, like we do
most days, that Eliza will rest/sleep comfortably
through most of it. I'll try (as I have for a year)
and hope to succeed this time (before descending into
a puddle) to read through all of the beautiful pages
you sent for Eliza's first-birthday scrapbook.
There's still room to add second-birthday wishes, if
you'd like to send an 8 1/2" x 11" page! We'll likely
watch last year's birthday slideshow (it's on her
blog: dixiejax.blogspot.com), and maybe I'll get
around to posting the months' worth of photos on my
camera to her photo album
(http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=x603pj9.9cvuroi9&Uy=5tsnjr&Ux=0).
I won't attach them here, as I know their size can
overwhelm some inboxes. Otherwise, it'll be a regular
day. Maybe Eliza will give us the gift of a good
night's sleep...

Meanwhile, speaking of pictures, some of those on my
camera are from Christmas, which was wonderful.
Before we left town, we were once again shocked and
amazed and brought to tears by a visit from the very
same anonymous and extremely generous Santa and elf
who visited last year. This year, though, I took a
photo, which I planned to send to the FBI...until I
read the note accompanying our gifts. "Santa's elves
still desire to operate in secret," so after a year of
doing my best sleuthing (and failing, for the most
part), I'm giving up. It turns out that "Santa"
really does exist, and some of you, no doubt, are His
hands and feet.

Our Christmas visit to Syracuse was wonderfully
uneventful, though Luke would have appreciated a bit
more eventfulness in the area of snowfall...

LUKE: "Let's go play in the snow, Nana!"
NANA: "There really isn't any snow to play in, Luke."
LUKE: (pointing out the window at the leftover few
inches of dirty, icy stuff), "Don't you see that white
stuff out there?!? THAT'S SNOW!"

Poor southern boy...he really has no idea what he's
missing.

Meanwhile, no ER visits, no weekend phone calls from
afar to our beloved NC pediatrician, no stress for the
local pediatricians who are so graciously on call for
us while we're there. And no stomach flu for the rest
of us, which has tarnished every Christmas/New Years
(and some summer visits, too) for the last twelve
years! That felt like a small miracle in itself, for
which we are very grateful. Add to that the luxury
and comfort of our recently-purchased minivan, which
made the packing so much simpler and the twelve-hour
drive ever so much more comfortable, and we could
hardly have asked for more. Thanks for all your
prayers.

As the weight of two years feels especially heavy some
days, even with the "how much longer?" question always
lingering, Santa's words to us in this year's
Christmas letter couldn't have been more appropriate
or timely: "Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor
mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect
clarity. All that I know now is partial and
incomplete, but then I will know everything
completely, just as God knows me now," 1 Corinthians
13:12. Hallelujah.

With love,
Sam, Daniele, Luke, and Eliza