Christmas-y Weekend Recap

Yes I'm late again in posting my weekend recap, but it was a busy weekend...

Friday night our small group met to do Christmas-y things.  We gathered money and gift cards to help out a local family, and then went out caroling to their house to give them the gift cards!  We had battery operated candles and everything, so it probably looked pretty neat.  We caroled at maybe half a dozen houses, primarily of people we knew.  It was a lot of fun, especially since we're all average singers (with the exception of one or two in the group), but nobody complained or shut their door in our face so we must have been alright! :) After that we went back to the house where we meet and had some food and chatted for the rest of the evening.

Saturday morning Bill had to work, so I slept in a bit and then got going on my huge to-do list.  I finished up the annual family calendar which I had started a couple days before, so that was a big relief!  I started this many years ago, where one Christmas I surprised everyone by making a calendar with pictures of me, my brother, and my 2 cousins on it.  That has now grown to include 3 spouses and 2 little kids as well!  I do it all "by hand" so to speak on Word (used to use a drawing program that's now extinct, so it was the next best option), and the end result is a calendar with one 8.5"x11" sheet for each month, since I know at least my mom and my aunt hang them on their fridge every month.

After that and finishing up some laundry while working on other things around the house, I headed out on some errands to buy the last few Christmas gifts.  That ended up taking longer than expected since one of the stores I really wanted to buy a couple things at had closed!  Definitely a bummer! :( But I got some things elsewhere that are hopefully ok.

Saturday evening after Bill got off work, we took care of another errand, had some dinner, then baked cut-out sugar cookies!  I wasn't planning on baking them during this school break since I just haven't had time, but he really wanted them so he was willing to help.  It was fun, and we got them all baked and decorated that evening.

During a break in the sugar cookie making, we checked the mail and I got a package from my "study buddy" church in Lancaster, PA.  Each seminary student has the option of having a study buddy church who will pray for the student and just generally get to know one another.  I had received a few letters from the church already this school year, and it's their women's ministry group that's corresponding with me and all that.  Well when we opened up the package, inside was a stack of envelopes!  Apparently they had each woman in their group send me a Christmas card, and each included a few dollars cash, anywhere from $1 to $5!  It was a lot of fun to open each of them up and see what was inside, and we ended up with a total of $42 from them!  (Yes mom, the hand-written thank-you note has been mailed. :)

Sunday morning I got up early to head to Toledo to go to my friend Linda's church there to play in the bell choir.  That was a lot of fun, because all of the people there are so welcoming!  It's a very small church and is mostly older people, but they're a really great congregation.  Our bell playing went very well I think, we played We Three Kings and Away in a Manger. There were a few notes missed, but the congregation was still very happy that we played.  Their bell choir is up to 7 people now I think, which is pretty good for a congregation that worships around 30!  After church I hung out for a little while, got the tour of Jim and Linda's parsonage there, and then had lunch with them.

After I got back home, I started on the rest of my holiday baking.  My friends Chelsea and Donna came over around 3:00 to help, which was lots of fun!  We made 4 batches of fudge (2 peanut butter and 2 chocolate) and 2 batches of haystack cookies.  They helped with the stirring of the fudge, prepping ingredients, and that sort of thing.  It was also great to have help with the haystacks, since they need to be individually spooned out.  It went way quicker with a couple people helping!  We got all of the baking done by about 5:30, even after Chelsea had to leave around 4pm since they had family coming over that evening.  Donna stayed for some dinner, and then I got to work packaging up the containers of goodies that I give to my co-workers.

Yesterday was a fairly average day, relatively busy at work as usual.  Last night my friend Jena came over and we got a ton of drywall dust cleaned up out of the living room and dining room!  She did a lot of dusting while I cleaned the floors, we were quite productive.  And we had some time to sit and chat too, since it's pretty rare she gets time away from her 3 little kids to have grown-up conversation!

Tonight after work I hope to get presents wrapped for Christmas, and maybe even get adventurous and get the small section of wall painted in the bedroom, but we'll see.