Happy Birthday AnaLise!

Happy 15th birthday AnaLise!

AnaLise has been such a great sister through the years. What a blessing it is to have her as a role-modle. AnaLise has such a loving heart for children. She is always ready for a challenge in some sort of sport. Her talents for music, crafts, sports, and cooking have been very apparent. She plays the violin, mandolin, guitar, and picking up a few other instruments. Her bright voice is a great blessing to our band.

Happy Birthday AnaLise!

Love, Tessa

Oh Christmas Tree!

I love this picture!

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, how lovely are thy branches!

Nikolai stepped off the plane into a winter wonderland, and absolutely loves the snow! He loves to play in it, to throw it, to climb it, and to eat it! He also is excited about Christmas. To think that probably never had a real Christmas tree and real Christmas presents blows me away. So in order to give him the 'full' affect, we waited till he came to go chop down our tree from our woods in the back.

Isaac carried the tree all the way back home in the blizzard, it didn't help that the wind was blowing the opposite direction down the hill when we were going up it, and that the huge tree acted like a sail to his disadvantage! :P

All of us gathered around the tree in the pine tree forest behind our house owned by our neighbor. He has wonderful trees for wonderful prices at a wonderful distance! :) (My snow pants do NOT normally look like that!! That was totally the light of the camera...trust me. :)

Dad and Lucas took turns pulling Nikolai in the sled. The snow was so deep that it would have taken a year to get him there and back, so we found the perfect solution...a sled!

The not quite finished product! (Photo complements of Nikolai ;)

Adoption Benifit Concert

About two weeks ago we did our fourth benefit concert for the adoption. We were so amazed at what the Lord did that night. To GOD be the glory! Our friends the Garms family graciously agreed to put on a double concert with us, and did a fabulous job! We had around 400 people show up for the fundraiser...what an answer to prayer. Along with the concerts there was a huge silent auction. Mom, Tessa and I had been soliciting donations from local businesses for the past month, and it really paid off. We are so thankful to all the companies, businesses, and friends who so generously donated; what a blessing!

To save time, I would like you to visit the blog of our friends the Armour family, who came to our concert. Their daughter, and my dear friend, Hannah, did a great job of taking pictures and then tried to send them to us, but the attachment files were having problems. The Armours put up a really nice post about the benefit concert, so visit their blog at http://www.armourclan.blogspot.com/, scroll down to the November 30th post entitled The Alzen Family's Adoption Concert, and just pretend I posted about it! :P Or go to the Garm family's blog at http://www.greatadventurefamily.blogspot.com/ at check out their November 23 post called Alzen Adoption Fundraiser as well!

We are so grateful to all of you who helped out, either by donating, performing, cleaning, cooking, announcing, or just attending, for you are playing a big role in bringing our two little boys home. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

Sincerely,

AnaLise for the Alzen family