Christmas Diary

My friend Cheryl mentioned that her blog tends to be her thoughts and observations and musings, and seldom about the day-to-day goings-on. Mine tends to be more thinking aloud and less about the events of our lives. But I really like reading the things my friends are up to and how they spend their time. For example, I get really cranky when people find fault with Pr Petersen for including silly stuff or family matters or cat stories on his blog, instead of confining himself to theology. So I'm going to take Cheryl's lead and report on what we did for Christmas.

Paul was done at work on the 24th at 2:00. After we stuffed some leftover dinner into him, the whole family went to church at my father-confessor's church. We tried to save a seat for Rachel & Matt, but the crowd was unbelievable, so they ended up sitting in the aisle instead of by us. We came home and worshiped here. I'm on altar duty for December, so I cleaned up after church and set up for the morning.

When we came home that night, I intended to watch Passion, something I've seemed to need every Christmas since it's been out. But Gary asked if I'd ever blogged about Maggie's birthday story, and he suggested that it would be nice if I did. So I did that instead. Andrew filled stockings for me while I reminisced in writing about that Christmas of 1994.

Next morning, the children got up, ate the contents of their stockings (Poptarts, cocoa, instant oatmeal), I jogged, and then we went to church. We ate at the Chinese restaurant and managed to refrain from embarrassing Maggie by breaking into a rousing version of "Happy Birthday." (Every other year, we sang to her, nice and loudly, at the restaurant.)

After dinner, we went to the hospital to visit and sing to a shut-in. We came home and opened presents, one person and one gift at a time. The evening was spent trying out Fluxx, phoning our kids and parents, and watching a video that arrived as a gift.