Christmas at the Kamberger's

Caitlin ready to begin opening presents.

The girls are anxiously waiting!

Juliana has the hang of this wrapper ripping thing!

Sarabeth only wanted 1 thing this year, and this is it.....an American Girl doll.

Grace's turn!

Sir Nathan the warrior is ready for all comers

Jeriah and Shawna



Mary's sister Cindy enjoying all the activity.

A Sad Day

It has been a tough day today. You can go to Jeremy's blog to read the latest downer on the adoption front.

Today we had to say goodbye to Maggie - our 17 mth old Golden Retriever. She was born with a congenital heart defect with a rapidly progressing heart murmur. She would have good days when she would run and fetch, running hard and happily. Then she would have bad days when she would pace, vomit and sleep for endless hours. This past week she had nearly 5 good days in a row! That was very uncommon as of late. Last evening however she was starting to have some difficulty breathing. She went into pulmonary edema and progressively worsened through the wee hours of the night/morning. I slept on the floor with her for several hours, sure in my heart that she wouldn't last till the morning light. This morning her respirations and heart rate were very fast and she was totally immobile. The vet was out on farm calls and couldn't come until nearly 11am. He eased her into the great doggie beyond as I stroked her soft, shiny fur. She was finally at full rest.

We will miss you, Maggie! We will miss how you loved to run to fetch the tennis ball over and over; how you jumped in the lake and barked at the geese; how you unmercifully chased the kitties and chewed on their fur! No more noses on my leg while I eat at the table. No more squeaky toy squeakily saying ,"come and play with me".

Goodbye, dear Maggie!

Mary

P.S. a favorite video of Maggie as a very young pup, playing with Tessa

Nothing to complain about

I have whined several times in this blog, both last winter and again this year about how much I dislike the snow, ice and cold......can't wait for spring etc. etc.

Today, I am thankful that I have electricity and a warm house (my corn stove needs electricity to run-- more on that another time). God has provided everything we need to survive, a home, heat, a great job that provides for my family and, as the title of this post says: I have NOTHING to complain about.

Many, many folks here in the midwest are tonight without the electricity that I'm so thankful for. The ice storms that have created so much havoc in this part of the country the past week have all been to the south of us, and I am also quite thankful for that. Please keep those who HAVE been affected by these events in your prayers.

1 Thes 5:18 "In everything give thanks...."
James 1:2 "Consider it all joy my brethren when you encounter various trials..."

John

A busy week

It's been a very busy week at the Kamberger's. We continue to prepare for Christmas, decorating the house, shopping, Mary baking cookies (yummm). My last post mentioned the nice coating of ice that we received......well that nice coating of ice meant many, many injuries that we had to deal with at the hospital. The wards were full all week, especially the orthopedic floor, making for a long week of work. Our pastor and good friend Steve Cox was one of the wounded, as he took a tumble on Tuesday morning while walking out to his deer stand. He went down with his left ankle fractured in two places. Thankfully, as he fell he was able to safely slide his loaded firearm away from him as he was going down. Pins and screws took care of the bones and now he is going stir-crazy in a cast, mobilizing as best he can with a walker. Steve, Lynn, Phil and Susan Cox came over for dinner tonight and we had a nice visit. Mary made a dynamite pot of chili and Steve had many stories to tell of his time in the hospital.

The snow is falling again-- 2 to 5 inches is the forecast for tonight. Winter in North Iowa is very long! I was out with the snowblower earlier this evening and the temp outside was 7 degrees. I can't wait for spring!!

John

Huckabee Surging!

Mike Huckabee has now taken over 2nd place in the national Republican polls. Click here to see the daily trend for each presidential candidate as polled by the Rasmussen organization. As of today, Huckabee is within 5 points of overtaking Guiliani for the national lead!

It's Baaaack!

Winter has made its return to North Iowa. Ughhhh.

A sheet of ice is covering everything as the first real winter storm of the season came through yesterday. After an inch or two of snow, we had several hours of sleet followed by freezing rain. Talk about a little bit of everything!

The end result is a hard coating of ice covering everything. The temps are expected to stay well below freezing all week, so what we have is here to stay. It's fun watching our dog Maggie slip and slide around the back yard but unfortunately for the kids, it's just not the kind of conditions to go out and have fun in (even tho they're trying-- hopefully no broken arms!)

Clear Lake has an annual "Christmas by the Lake" celebration which ends on Saturday night with a parade of decorated/lighted floats and then fireworks out over the frozen lake. This year's event was postponed by the storm. It has been rescheduled for next weekend. Hopefully the weather will cooperate more.

Prior to the storm's arrival, Mary went out to Kragel's Tree Farm and picked up our tree. We had gone out as a family back in October and picked out/tagged a tree, an annual rite at our house. Last evening as the storm blew outside, we put the tree up and decorated it. The wonderful smell of a fresh cut evergreen in the house is a sure sign of Christmas.

Huckabee at the Surf Ballroom

Mike Huckabee and Barry Goudreau jamming at the Surf.

We went to the famous Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake for the first time Friday night. Hard to believe we've lived here for almost 5 yrs now and this is our first visit to the Surf. For those of you who don't know the story, the Surf is where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper played their last concert in February 1959. Shortly after the concert they were killed in a plane crash on the way to their next venue.

At the Surf, we enjoyed a concert by Capitol Offense, the band for which presidential candidate Mike Huckabee plays bass guitar. We were pleasantly surprised by the fact that the music was very good. We were expecting to hear the Governor speak some on the issues, but instead the night was about the music. Joining the band on stage for several songs was Barry Goudreau, the lead guitarist of the group Boston. The selections for the night were mostly rock songs from the 70's and 80's, including some southern rock hits like Lynard Skynard's "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Free Bird". With Barry on stage, of course the great Boston hit "More than a Feeling" went over well.

Governor Huckabee's campaign is heating up. He is now second in the Iowa polls with the caucuses coming up in just 2 months. He is also garnering more national attention and is now running neck and neck with Romney and McCain for third in the national Republican polls, just behind Fred Thompson and about 10 points behind Rudy G.

I still feel Huckabee is the best candidate. He is a true pro-life conservative who is not afraid to speak his mind. He has never waivered in his pro-life, pro-Christian stance. He has over 10 years of executive experience as the republican governor of a very democratic state, Arkansas. He was re-elected in this democratic state twice by very large margins. Rudy is for abortion rights. Romney has done the flip-flop on many issues. Fred T's not willing to discuss any of the issues and McCain is McCain. Huckabee knows where he stands on the issues and doesn't waiver from where he stands. Visit http://www.mikehuckabee.com/ and click on some of the videos to hear what the governor has to say about the issues. Join Huck's army as he continues to mock the media "talking heads" by gaining ground on the first tier candidates. My prediction is here: Mike Huckabee will win the Iowa Caucus on January 3, 2008.

Introducing Jeremy Yue Yuan Kamberger

Many of you already know this, but Mary and I are returning to China soon to adopt our 7th child, Jeremy Yue Yuan Kamberger. Jeremy is 7 years old and has lived his entire life at the Yueyang orphanage in Hunan province. His chinese name is Yue Yuan Rong.

As you can see from the pictures I've attached, Jeremy was born with no hands. He has learned to adapt to this situation and can do anything the other children in the orphanage can do.

We will post further info regarding our travel dates when that info is received. We anticipate traveling in December.

A lightening strike!

Just as we were leaving church last Sunday the rain began. About 2 minutes after we got home there was a huge boom of thunder and simultaneous flash of lightening right outside the kitchen window. Shortly thereafter I began to tally the damages:

Main computer in the family room- nuked;
Printer- fried;
telephones- no dial tone
DSL- out
DirecTV receiver- nuked (or so I thought).

The local phone company came right out and got the land line and DSL back up. They needed to replace a box on the outside of the house. Initially the DSL didn't come back up. After some testing we found out the surge protector was also fried (the phone line was going thru the surge protector).

About 2 hours after the strike, the DirecTV receiver fired back up and seems to be working OK, although whenever I change channels there is a 2-3 second pause with a green screen before the picture comes in. This is new since the lightening.

As for the computer, the repair place said it would make a nice paperweight! Fortunately, they HAVE been able to salvage the data from my hard drive to DVDs, which I will be able to copy to the new computer I've ordered.

The power of nature is amazing.

An Update

It's been a very busy month or so since we got home from our vacation.

John has been putting in a lot of hours at work, and trying to get a little fishing in during the evenings. The walleye have been hitting again as the lake water temps get lower. During the heat of summer, fishing on Clear Lake eases off a little then picks up again as fall approaches. There are currently 4 nice sized walleye filleted out and in the freezer awaiting the fryer or grill.

Mary recently spent a huge amount of time organizing and doing a garage/yard sale. We were able to get rid of a lot of stuff, much of which was donated by friends and neighbors. The proceeds are going to be used for our upcoming adoption of Jeremy.

Jeriah is back in school, beginning his senior year at Faith Baptist Bible College. He is also still working as the youth pastor at First Baptist in Colfax, IA.

Caitlin is now in her sophomore year in high school. She is still being home-schooled but heads off to Ventura HS for band every other day, goes to piano lessons weekly and does DRIVER'S ED every Wed and Sat. This is a very stressful time for mom and dad!!! There's been 1 "STOP THE CAR NOW!" episode as a stop sign was missed, but overall Caitlin is doing much better as she gains experience behind the wheel.

Grace is in 8th grade and taking the usual subjects in school. She and Mary recently painted her bedroom in cool shades of blue and orange.

Sarabeth is starting 2nd grade and is reading very well. She has recently begun piano lessons and has memorized several Bible verses in the past two weeks. Mary is taking the 3 youngest kids to AWANA in Forest City every Wed afternoon where they spend time learning verses and doing games and activities. She is now riding her 2-wheeler with no training wheels and she and Grace each got their ears pierced (Grace's second set!) on the last night of our vacation.

Juliana and Nathan are doing pre-school several days a week with Mary... and are growing like weeds. They love to ride their bikes (a 2 wheeler with trainers for Nate and a 3-wheeler for Juls) up and down the sidewalk and all the kids enjoy going fishing. Sarabeth and Juliana have recently caught their first fish. Sarabeth hooked a yellow bass and Juliana got a small walleye. Nathan doesn't have the necessary patience yet, but hopefully that will come as he gets a little bigger.