Wow, There went another one. It seems that my father was right after all. Isn’t it amazing how much he knew back when I thought I knew it all? He really did know what he was talking about didn’t he. Anyway it seems it wasn’t too long ago that I was sitting here trying to do this the last time. We pray that the Lord has kept you all well during the year. We have been fairly healthy this year, a few (actually quite a few) trips to the pediatricians office, several courses of antibiotics for most of us, but we seem to be doing ok at the moment, well we do have this nagging cold that seems to be making the rounds with the kids and with Carol and Charlie. Keep us in prayer for continued health and that we don’t have to keep being put on medications so much of the time during this season of the year.

Well, lets see what has been going on this year, Charles (you remember, the tall one) has been babysitting a bit with the same couple that he was last year. Charlie had a full 3 week vacation last year around Christmas, Charlotte and Candace enjoyed the visits with their cousins from Canada. Jocelyn and Joannie were here both at Christmas 2000 and then again during the summer. Chris is still working hard at Miller High School. He was asking what grade am I in and finally he came home and said he was in grade 11. His teacher must have told him that. Curtis is growing strong and tall, doing good in school with this being his second year with teacher Roz and his last year at the West Valley Special Ed Center. We really haven’t looked into where he will go next year, we may put him in the same school as Chris just to keep our level of confusion down as much as we can. Charlotte, Candace, Cora and Camille are doing good in their school work at Osborne Christian School, doing lots of work and trying to get out of as much as possible. Connor and Claire try real hard to keep up and are getting better at it each day.

Perhaps you remember we used to attend ONC – Osborne Neighborhood Church, well the Lord led us back not only to attend but we became members and have been encouraged all year, our Sunday school is the most precious as you know, this is a smaller group to share prayer needs and learn trust, one baby step at a time.

Carol still enjoys her walks, tries to teach the kids to take turns going with her in one of the strollers. Sometimes Charles, Charlotte or Candace and Chris ride bikes with her, no more running as no answers have been found with the feet, walking just takes longer.

We are still blessed to have had our babysitter Berta, although due to surgery she needed, we did not have her from Sept. 23 till the new year, this was a difficult time and Charlie and I went everywhere separate except for the few times Mom and Dad or Charles could be here for a short time, also we were blessed to have an agency that stepped in on Sunday’s so we could attend Church as a family for 2 months.

Claire Vanessa got her first and second tooth in January, then they just started coming in quite a few at a time. Now you need to be careful, they sure are sharp.

February! What can we say about February? It was a real eye opener for us. Charlie has never had to go out and look for a job before until then. Nortel, the company Charlie had worked for for the last 18 years decided that they didn’t need the development group here in southern California and laid off over 200 engineers all in the same day, no warnings, no rumors, no nothing, just came into a meeting one morning and they all got the news. Spent a week cleaning out the office and attending job placement classes that were supplied by Nortel, then the next 6 months looking for a job. We did manage to get most of the children and us in for hearing tests and eye test before that coverage disappeared.

This time in our life was a one of a kind experience. The type that you are thankful that you went through but that you don’t ever want to do it again. You know what we mean. When Charlie got the termination notice it was kind of like a dream at first, like we would wake up one day and all would be back as it was. Charlie even had a dream that this would happen one night. Of course it didn’t. The company, Nortel, did do it the right way, if there is such a thing. They gave everyone 60 days notice and they all had the first 30 days to clean out their office and had complete access to the building and equipment there for that time. They also provided for outside career management services that included help in putting together a resume and other job search tips and strategies. This was a pretty frightening time for all of us as Charlie had never been out of a job before in his life, he had always had a new job before leaving the old one and even with that, had not moved around much at all, after all he was with Nortel for 18 years. During this time there were a lot of unknowns, from day to day not knowing what was going to happen, calling, sending resumes out, faxing, emailing, calling, registering with recruiters and trying to network with others that were getting jobs pretty quickly. It was probably during May or about then that there were so many ups and downs, then no calls at all for some time that there was some depression that seemed to hit the whole family. Amazingly the Lord provided with a severance package that was made up of a weeks pay for each year of service. You do the math, with the original 60 days notice, about 4 weeks of vacation pay then 18 weeks of severance pay, we had complete wages and continued medical benefits for about 6 months. About at this half way point we started to really get serious about taking inventory of our "Wants" and "Needs" and we believe that it has helped us to be more aware of others and to be more willing to help them in their times of need also. We received a lot of this type of help ourselves, from anonymously sent money, to offers from people of all walks of life. People just giving us money and others willing to loan us quite a bit, it showed us the real caring of many people and how the Lord does provide for our "Needs".

As some of you know Charlie has been in the computer programming field for about the last 15 years of his career, but with no formal training or schooling to support this. This, along with a really soft job market made it very difficult in the job search. There were several positions that sounded great until the interview process and they made choices to select people with the college degrees over him. As the time got shorter and shorter, he applied at places like Radio Shack, Circuit City, Staples and others. Even took the postal service examination to be a letter carrier. Radio Shack was ready to offer him a job, but their contract stated that he couldn’t work in the computer field on the side and this would have been a good second source of income for us, and they also wanted him to work full time, which to them means 9 am till closing and beyond, 7 days a week and that is one thing that just wouldn’t work for our family. We also choose to put a limit on driving time, In all the jobs he looked at, he would not apply to any that would require more than about a 30 minute drive each way.

To shorten an already long story, we were about 2 weeks from applying for unemployment when a recruiter called about a job real close here in Pacoima. I talked with them about it, took a test from home and interviewed with them. They wanted to wait for their president to return from out of town before making a decision as to who to hire. Well at the end of the week that he interviewed, he called the recruiter asking if there was anything happening, the recruiter then called the company to ask the same question and an offer of employment was made. Even now as we are writing this it amazes me that this happened with such timing. He accepted the job and started the following week, the 13^th of August, 2001. Get this if you get anything from this, our first paycheck came the week before our last severance check came. Isn’t our God great? He is always on time and very seldom early. Do we want to do this again? No! But perhaps it has helped us to rely on Him more than to rely on ourselves so much.

We participated in the annual Walk for Life to help raise finances for our local Crisis Pregnancy Center, (now called Pregnancy Resource Center) during March, it was a fun day for all, balloons, seeing friends from over the years, neighbors that we seem to only see once a year even though we live only a block away, face painting and a moon bounce. God lifted the rain enough for that day to allow a good turn out.

Charles attended Winter Church camp, while Chris stayed busy helping with back yard jobs at Mom and Dad’s. Grandma (Carols mom) spent time in Holy Cross , about 3 days recovering from some diabetic problems.

Practices for plays and the School Program meetings continue to keep us busy. Also conferences with Teacher'’ was this month so another day here and there. A precious Easter shared with our family, Mom and Dad and some friends, Al and Kathie, this year we did it on Saturday and were able to stay up later as Sunday was to be hectic and these years we are seeing that the children are going back to school the day after Easter, somehow we used to think we had a bit of time after. We celebrated our 21st Wedding Anniversary. We pray for many more healthy, peaceful and happy ones.

Carol won’t admit it but April brought another of her birthday celebrations. We celebrated with the usual cake and sharing and giving praise for her birth and for her being here with us for another good year. And then along came May and believe it or not our Christopher turned the big 17! And Cora squeezed in her 6^th. Then in June we were finally able to celebrate the finalization of the adoption of Connor and Claire. What a relief to finally have that behind us. We had been waiting for over 2.5 years for Connor and Claire was over a year old also.

Vacation Bible school for Charlotte and Candace started the week of July 30 and went through August 3, with a program on Sunday August 5, which we were able to invite Grandma and Grandpa and Auntie Margaret to, they are getting used to the church with School programs, Singing programs and VBS programs, and they know people now and we hope they don’t feel uncomfortable. Charles was also able to be on the other side , the helping side for 3 of the 5 days of VBS program, other times he watched his brothers and sisters here and helped . This was a very difficult month and perhaps the inside ache has not fully come, it comes now and then with a little release, a dear friend, Victor , some of you may have met him at the Children’s parties, he was like a cousin or Uncle to the children, had been having leg pain, he loved to ride his bike, take the bus, the Dr.’s recommended surgery for "varicose veins" , to be in the same Surgery Center as our children have their ear tubes done in. Some concern after surgery and a fever kept him there, visiting him that night he was thirsty and hungry for lots of crackers, able to talk to us, by visiting the following night , the pain and change were unbelievable, prayers were being lifted by many and the prayer chain, each day became worse, until it was decided by his brother to do what they called "Pull the plug", never do I want to again be there for this , but the words of the Pastor doing this and needing to say good bye, also knowing that Victor had accepted Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior allowed it to be a bit easier at that time. He was only 45 years old. He is missed still. July we were happy to have Mom Pearl (Charlie’s Mom) from Kansas and Aunt Carol (Charlie’s sister) fly in and stay from the 6th or so until the 10th, a fast visit but a nice time was had by all the kids and the adults also. Candace turned 11 in August and we had a few friends join us for a celebration of the event.

Hard to believe that August came so fast and school starting back, we were blessed with Curtis being able to stay at West Valley Spec. Ed for another year and have his same teacher, Teacher Roz, a precious woman , teacher and someone I would like to call "friend" , her true heart love and patience has allowed us to see mountains move for Curtis including about 75% or more bathroom ability, more sign language and a desire to be more a part of his class and the family, thank you Lord for teachers such as this.

We do know many teachers, from High School teachers like , Michelle, yes you, and my own cousin, Colleen in Canada , Marlene, Miriam and Margo and Judy from Sunday school and am sure I am forgetting some, am sure their lives touch many children also.

Cora and Candace were in Surgery Center at Holy Cross to have their second set of ear tubes put in. The ENT has some concern because they both may have developed a possible allergy to the substance the tubes are made of and we will need to keep a check on this.

Grandma and Grandpa have enjoyed taking the older ones able to sit through live plays to "Granada Theatre" and "Glendale" so Chris, Charles, Charlotte and Candace have enjoyed these times with their grand parents.

Connor Lee turned 3 years old in September, this is hard on Mommy. Charles then got to the 17 year mark also, and began to apply at a few jobs, however, he too, found out jobs were not coming easy, and since has applied at a few more and still no calls. We have a Walgreen's coming up near us, so he has thought perhaps after the first of the year or when they put up their "Now Hiring" sign that it might be another place to try for an application.

Berta, you remember her don’t you, had her surgery and we were out one of the best sitters we have ever had, we have kept her in much prayer and continue to hold her up for complete healing and restoration for her to return to us ready for the challenge of all these little people around here.

Camille had a small Praise/Birthday party in October, her fifth. She also started in Osborne Christian School this year.

Charlie is also getting older, we celebrated his birthday in November. This is also a month of school Parent meetings at the schools, and we all suffered through another session in the dentists seat, all that is except Connor and Claire. We do give lots of Praise though because none of us had any cavities again.

This year as we start our Advent season, we are reading from a calendar that was made for us by our cousins Jocelyn and Joannie in Canada last year. We are also trying to explain the advent season to the little ones as we start to read the stories of the birth of our Savior so many years ago. Our biggest prayer for all our children large and small is that they do or will understand this one thing in their life, That Jesus was born and raised as a child so that he could and did die on the cross for our sins, rose on the third day and that we will spend eternity with him in heaven.

Caleb will celebrate his 9^th birthday during December along with Claire Vanessa’s second. We have outside lights, decorations and a Nativity scene that grandpa Pete made for us last year with lights all around. The little (and big) kids really like to sit at the window and watch the lights blinking on and off before they go to bed at night. They will be disappointed after Christmas when we take them all down again. We haven’t decorated too much inside simply due to the fact that too many little fingers are around to get into everything.

The Sunday School Program at Church was a very special evening. Charlotte had a small speaking part, she was an angel, and both Charlotte and Candace sang in the program with all the other kids. Candace and Charlotte will be involved in another play and singing with Kingdom Kids a Program they are also in. We will all have Sunday school parties. The High school youth have their programs/parties, and ministry to hand out hooded sweaters in areas of Los Angeles to those that are in need. Charlie and I also hope to be blessed to attend our Sunday School Dinner and Fellowship Get together. Charlotte and Candace, along with Camille and Connor will probably have small parties during their normal Sunday School times on a Sunday before Christmas.

The Public schools start vacation this year on Monday December 17 and have off until Jan. 7. Things have changed. Hoping to be in touch with Berta, have spoken a few times and write each week, as to when she feels she is able to come back, possibly the end of December.

Thank you to all who have lifted us in prayer, we are truly asking for continued prayer for strength and energy , also peacefulness in this New Year. God bless each of you in a way you truly need.