Christmas Comes to the Mattinglys!

We just realized that we had been too busy to blog for a weekish:)  As you can see Christmas has fully hit the Mattingly family!  We want to offer our heart-felt and deepest thanks and love to all of those who without your help, support, and prayers this would not have happened, since we didn't even know these three beautiful, resilient, well-adjusted, happy, hysterical, exhausting, loving, busy, wonderful children existed until November 18th!  As you can imagine, our life has been a whirlwind!

This last Monday we found ourselves shopping for necessities like socks, undies, and shoes, school supplies so that the girls (1st and 3rd graders) could start school this last Tuesday and half-day Wednesday so that they wouldn't spend the entire Christmas break fretting over starting a new school but instead be excited to go back and see their new friends and teachers, and of course, Christmas presents since it had just dawned on us that Christmas and perhaps more importantly to the kids Christmas Eve was quickly approaching.  It was a crazy shopping trip that boggled the mind!  I was sitting criss-cross-applesauce in the Wal-Mart school supply office aisle crazily looking between two school lists and sending Stephen on crazy errands like go and grab four yellow folders, three blue folders, and six yellow folders at midnight.

Until Thursday evening of this week, our house had a naked, but live and lovingly selected by our four kids as a suitably beautiful enough to wow it's family while still being scrawny enough to serve as the object of a pity-mission to rescue it from the chipper Christmas tree, while the fall sunflower and pumpkin wreath still hung on the front door.  It seems that when you go from one to four children in five days and then have a week to get them moved in, enrolled into school and preschool, decorate the house, and plan Christmas festivities for kids who had never sprinkled sugar crystals on chocolate covered pretzels, dipped anything in chocolate (much less an Oreo ball), or only sat on Santa's lap once or twice that they could remember, you have little time to deck the halls from top to bottom!  None of us noticed, though.  As Jackson put it, "They don't feel like kids we're adopting.  They feel like long-lost family finally come home."

Our new Forever Family is such a huge blessing of love and laughter!  We're all working on adjusting to new ways of operating, but it's bound together with love and an amazing ease that can only be God-given.  He blessedly looked down October of 2010 in the Atlanta airport and planted within Jack, Stephen, and my hearts a crazy, comfort-zone-pushing, challenging idea that only God could come up with and then gave us the courage, commitment, and yes, time to embrace opening our hearts and home to two sisters and a brother who need love, consistency, empowerment, understanding, permanency, and the opportunity to relax and just enjoy childhood.

We're all counting the days until the end of June (the standard six-month period where as the 1st grader boldly quoted mom to the worker who visited, "You're here to make sure they're not making us sleep in the doghouse!") when they officially become Mattinglys!  I'm counting the days until Fifi and Sir arrive for New Year's when I can settle down for a long winter's nap!

So from the Mattinglys, "Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night!" (especially since the little darlings are probably going to be up at the butt crack of dawn to see what Santa brought).  Say a prayer for a very tired yet fulfilled momma and daddy when you think of us....and oh yeah, the Christmas cards should be getting to you soon:)