The Holidays

Wow...life has been busy...our christmas eve service went well...we had a good attendence and everyone seemed to enjoy the candelight service in the evening. We left right after and headed to marathon and stayed up til all hours that night catching up with family. Now that we are all grown and there are no kids around we had a lesuirely morning, mom made breakfast, and then we opened presents.

The only crazy thing was the new family tradition. For as long as i can remember we have begged mom to let us open at least one present christmas eve. That NEVER happened and was an affront to my mother's culutral standards. Well, this year we are all sitting around christmas eve and mom comes out with a present for each of us. Dad refused to open it at first and i nearly fell off my chair in shock. She had gotten us each pj's but we did not realize we were to wear them to open presents the next day...so we all got up, showered and dressed only to be sent back to our rooms to change!

We had a wonderful time visting friends and family and the time flew by. But, i got to stop at my favorite thrift store looking for some dress shoes and found 2 pair my size, exactly what i needed...for $3.00 (you would have loved in ness...they were having some great sales!)

When we arrived home we decided to do a mountian hike...kevin had purchased some books with maps and descriptions of the hikes. It was a beautiful day and we made it almost to the top of pharoah mt. before realizing it was not as easy of a hike as we first thought so we turned around and headed back a little sore and cold.

We spent saturday and sunday afternoon getting ready for the open house and had about 20 people come...it turned out well and they all liked what I have done with the house...which is big to me since it's still not really mine but the churches and I want them to feel like we are taking care of it. The funny thing is many of them are snow birds and we realized during the party that our deacons and trustees will all be in florida during Feb. However says that church ministry is at all normal has never worked in a small chuch...

so, now we are getting ready to go down to glens falls (the nearest big town) to go out for my birthday (which is tomorrow but with prayer meeting at our house from now on tuesday works better) and to do some shopping. kevin's planning our next hike and i'm am starting to get called to sub...plus still trying to get together with various families from our church...we will not be bored.