A Great Weekend!

It actually started on Thursday. Can't remember much about that day except school and housework. It was James' CPMA service that night. He led What Child is This; O, Holy Night; and O Come, O Come Emmanuel... and had ME play the piano for them! WHAT A JERK! Ha! Christmas song are soooooooooooo hard to play. I had practiced ahead of time, but it didn't seem to help much. What Child is This is okay, but the other two are TOUGH. I played poorly enough that he cut them short. So sad! Ha!

At about 10:00 that night our company arrived. The Hays were on their way to Texas to hold a weekend Revival and had made reservations at the Horne Hotel and Party House. :-) I had made lemon bars, chocolate chip cookie bars, and pepperoni pinwheels to help us feel party-ish. And, of course, we have the soda fountain. It had been a few weeks since that had been used, but Brother Dustin got it all warmed up for us. I really think he gets more use out of it than we do. Ha! It makes me very happy to see him bringing creation after creation back to the table for whoever orders them. What a fun thing to have a soda fountain! Anyway, we played a very tragic game of I Buy (I don't recall the exact score, but it was ugly!), and then moved straight into Balderdash, skipping the usual Pictionary game since they Hays had quite a drive ahead of them the next day. Still, Balderdash took forever! We had some real good laughs though, and that's what matters. "The One Year Wonder" lost that game pretty big. :-) Even without Pictionary it was nearly 3:00 before we went to bed! Crazy!!! It was a very short visit, but oh, so fun. We had some half-cooked cinnamon rolls with icing and left-over Krispy Kremes the next morning before they left.

They hit the road and we got our day rolling. Had devotions with the kids and did a few things around the house. I wasn't feeling very well, so I curled up on the couch in the living room for nap. It was a dark and sort of dreary day and we had all the Christmas lights on (lighted greenery around the doorways, lights hidden in the "snow" that my train and snowmen sit on up on the piano, and of course the tree lights. There was Christmas music playing softly in the background and a crackling fire in the fireplace. I curled my hurting self up under one of Grandmother's heavy quilts and just soaked in the glory of a nap when you're soooooo tired--in such a great setting! It was one of those ~aaaaaaaahhhhh~ naps that just felt so, so good. :-) I did feel slightly guilty though, knowing I was enjoying such a luxury while the weary Hays were on the road for the next six hours. Oh well. It was a GREAT nap. :-)

I stayed up that night and worked on my ABM service. That's about all I remember. Yesterday was spent almost entirely in the kitchen. ABM service was to be here at our house today and I had lots of baking to do. I was able to get everything all taken care of and have the house in pretty good shape. Oh, yeah--I also cut the boys' hair yesterday. I hate that job. It takes me FOREVER. But in the end they actually look pretty good this time. Last time it was a terrible hack job! Anyway, I had everything taken care of so I could spend some more time on my service--and Sunday School class--last night.

We had a really, really good service this morning. We had good worship (James led a bunch of CHORUSES, if you can believe that! Nothing from the blue book!!! Can you imagine?!?!?) and then Brother Chris preached a really, really good message. We are so blessed to have him for our pastor. He keeps us constantly challenged.

After service we sent Katie with the Clarksons and brought Cainan home with us. We were only home for about an hour before the crowd showed up for our 2:00 band meeting. Hard as I tried, I just wasn't able to come up with a Christmas themed service! ~sigh~ How sad. Still, I felt good about what the Lord had given me. It focused mainly on that scripture in Hebrews that says, "Wherefore lift up the hands that hang down, and the feeble knees; Make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way, but let it rather be healed." Those verses struck me very ABM-ish this past week and I felt like that's the direction we were supposed to go. We did sing some Christmas songs--which James made me play again. Ggrrr. He's so much better than me, but he simply refuses when it comes to Christmas songs. Sissy. Ha!

After service we fellowshipped and ate. A lot. We had left-over lemon bars from the Hays' visit, some white chocolate pretzels they had left for us (how thoughtful! And can you believe I SHARED them?!), two pumpkin pies, more pepperoni pinwheels 'cuz I still had the ingredients for more, some fresh gingerbread (not the cookies, the read stuff--gingerBREAD)--YUM!--a meat and cheese tray, punch... Hhmmm. Seems like I'm forgetting something. At any rate ;-) it was a lot of food and I think it all turned out well. Oh! The poppy seed bread! I had made a BUNCH of that. Four big loaves and six little ones--to give to the members. We had a good time just talking and visiting with everybody. Though none of these people linger like I would like! Ha! Service was at 2:00 and I think the whole crowd was gone by about 4:00. So our whole family decided to make a night of it. We got the house put back together and the dishes taken care of and I think we were all in our pj's by 4:30! Ha! I used some more left-over ingredients and used them to make homemade pizza tonight. Nothing to write home about, but we ate most of it. And it used up some more stuff we needed to use. :-)

Sat down the the kid-o's and watched The Toy that Saved Christmas. I almost forget the feel that the old Veggie Tales had. Something they seemed to have lost some time ago. I laughed a lot. I didn't remember thinking that show was all that great, but I sure enjoyed it tonight. I LOVE the silly song, particularly the verse about the viking:

"I'm a viking! And I've come to take your land, oh yes! I've come to take your land, and I've come to burn your crops and steal your horses. And I've come to... step on your chickens! And soil your quilts!"

HA! It's so great. And then when he comes back and says, "Though I'd love to soil your quilts, I don't think that I wilt... because it's Christmas!" :-)

The kids are now reading library books and James and I are hanging out on our computers. It's about time for devotions now. Not sure what we'll do after we put the kids down, but I'm sure it won't be anything productive. I'm shot! It's been a great weekend though. Good church, good friends and fun and food, lots of Christmas music and a pretty Christmassy house and nice, cold weather and nice cozy fires... ~sigh~ Life is grand. :-)