Aunt Kristal (Sam)

All of the nieces and nephews (with the exception of Austin) of Aunt Kristal from my side of the family were able to spend some time with her this last weekend. In fact, this was the first time that Willow was introduced to her. My younger sister (I call her "Sam") lives in Idaho with her husband and two adopted children, and came to Alameda (nearby) this weekend to attend some Coast Guard Auxiliary Training that is made up of volunteers like Sam. It was very good to see her and spend some time together, and as you can see from the pictures below the girls were really comfortable with her and seemed to enjoy one another immensely. It's unfortunate that we're not closer in geographic proximity, but we'll take what we can get.

Tomorrow I fly down to Los Angeles for a two day business trip while Victoria and the kids ironically drive down to Los Angeles to spend time with her younger brother (Chris), wife and children. Poppy was so excited to go that she was counting the "dark times" until she left, beginning earlier last week. (Remember, this is how she counted down the time until we picked up Willow before we left for China.) Barret was equally excited to see his cousins, but wasn't quite so expressive about his enthusiasm by counting "dark times", but rather just maturely counting down the days. I'm going to miss them all so.

Warmly in Christ,

Tom