Nice Weekend . . . Crappy New Week Beginning

Well I hope everyone had a very nice Christmas. I had such a relaxing weekend on Saturday and Sunday. Enjoyed the holiday with my family. My grandpa came to visit from out of town, and it was so nice to have him here this year. We had a lovely Christmas Eve service on Saturday night, and service Christmas morning. The turn out at both services was great, and it was nice to see so many families coming together and take time out this weekend to worship and remember the meaning of what we are celebrating.

Unfortunately I had to return to work today. However, on my way in this morning it was snowing some snow/sleet that made the roads quite slick. I was almost to work when a car in front slide out of control into the guardrail and and ended up sideways in my lane, well I couldn't stop and slid right into him. My car doesn't look so great anymore. It's a bit smashed up now in the front. I came out okay, but a bit sore, tender, bruised, and my knee got banged up quite a bit, so for now I have to use crutches to keep off it, and then keep it iced. All and all it could have been worse, so I am very thankful. Not exactly a way I wanted to begin the week.

Hope everyone has a better week then I will probably have with these stupid pain in the butt crutches.

One More Week!!

So only one more week till Christmas!! Can you believe it? Well technically it's a little less, but thats close enough. I'm so excited! Just because I can't wait to see what everyone thinks of things that I got for them. I get so excited for that, and wish I could give them the presents early. I mean I suppose I could, really, I mean it is my choice, but that would defeat the purpose. I've had most of my shopping done for a long time. This weekend I finished up the last little bit that I had though. All the presents are wrapped and under the tree. :o)

I'm also excited because my grandpa is coming. It will be nice to have him here with us for Christmas this year. He is coming on Thursday, and I'm not sure when he is leaving. I know he will be here at least through Christmas, and I would imagine a day or two afterwards. It stinks that I have to work a lot of that time, but at least I have Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off to spend with him and my family.

Work has of course been busy with last minute shoppers placing orders in hopes to get things in time for Christmas. It's been stressful when you have those angry ones that won't be able to get their items because something is on backorder, but such is life. Now, while I do not work this Christmas Eve, we are open on Christmas Eve, and I have worked every other one of them, what is really funny is when you get the customers on the phone that want to place an order and they ask if they can get it in time for Christmas! You just have to laugh because they are totally serious, and you wonder what goes through their heads to make them think they could order something on Christmas Eve and have it on Christmas Day. *Sighs* Oh it's good stuff.

Well I hope all of you have a wonderful and Merry Christmas. God Bless!

Luke Chapter 2

This weeks scripture reading is Luke Chapter 2, and I think it is only fitting for the Holiday season and the upcoming Christmas day of December 25. After all it is not all that far away now. Luke Chapter 2 is of course the story of Christ's birth. It has been encouraged to me, and I also encourage you, to read this passage every day this week. I'm even going to take it a step further and say to read this every day through Christmas. This will be just an added way to remind us what we are really celebrating. Read it with the link I provided, or with your own Bibles. Take care and Merry Christmas!

Narnia

Last night my brother and I went and saw the new "Chronicles of Narnia" movie. I thought it was awesome. Scott really liked it as well. The story was well told, and the special effects and costumes and everything were very well done. It was long, but not too long because you were so into the movie that you didn't even realize it. All the main characters were really well done and cast well. I don't think a critic could find a bad thing to say about the movie, but that is just my opinion. I highly recommend it to everyone.

The weekend went well. As I said in my last post I was going to our church's annual Cookie Walk/Bazaar to work for a little bit at it before meeting my friend Susan and her daughter Emily. The even seemed to be a good success as it is every year. I got there at 20 minutes to 8:00a.m., as it opened at 8:00a.m., and there were already people waiting outside for us to open. I tell you they start showing up earlier and earlier every year. We had a ton of cookies though, some of which I baked myself, so there were plenty for the masses that came through. After Susan and Emily came over and got their cookies, and we ate breakfast there, Emily and I left to get some items we needed for the day to work on our surprises for her mom and dad in their house.

Emily and I spent the whole day together while dad was at work and Susan spent the day with her mom. I told them they had to be gone the entire day while Emily and I worked. Emily and I went over to Target to get her a new bench with pull out carts that go underneath it to organize her toys and things in her room. Then we went over to Michaels to get paint and stencils to paint it with, as well as cork bulletin boards for another project. When we got home we got the bench put together, and Emily got to work painting it. Then we had to clean and organize her room. That wasn't the fun part of course. Then we had to move the bench in. After that we gathered up all her artwork she's made for mom and dad, and things she's done in kindergarten and put them together in a collage on the bulletin boards for them to hang up wherever they would like to display it all. It was a lot of work that took all day, and we didn't get everything done we wanted to for Susan and Steve, but they were quite excited and happy about what we did get done.

So that was pretty much my weekend. It was pretty busy, and some of it I would have liked to just have relaxed more inside by the fire, but that's okay. I still had a lot of fun. :o)

Cookie Walk

Tomorrow is my church's annual cookie walk/bazaar. It's a huge thing every year, and people from all over the area are lined up outside our doors bright and early waiting to get inside and get some yummy cookies and other home baked goodies. They've learned that if they don't get there early enough there won't be as good of a selection left towards the end of the morning. Tonight I'm going to try and make some cookies and some of that Skorpa that I learned to make last weekend, and take it over to the cookie walk in the morning for them to sell. Then I'm going to meet my friend Susan and her daughter Emily over there, and perhaps Susan's mom as well. We're going to buy our Christmas cookies, and any other goodies, and then Susan is going to go off with her mom for the entire day while Emily go and work on some surprises for her mom and dad. I have some little projects in mind that should be fun for Emily and a really neat surprise for Susan and Steve. I'm really looking forward to spending the day with Emily as I don't really get to spend a whole lot of time with her, just her and I, and just doing something special the two of us like this. Plus I can't wait to see the look on Susan and Steve's faces when they see what all we do. Well I guess that is all. I will let you all know how Emily and I's surprises go tomorrow. Take care all, and have a wonderful weekend!

Sunday Events

Today was our Christmas program at church. Yes, it is a little early in the month, but it is kind of nice because it gets everyone thinking about the season and what it really means. It's a whole time of celebration, and not just one day. The youth in our church put it on every year, with some help of course, and they did a wonderful job. We have some very talented kids in our church, especially musically.

After church our recently retired pastor and his wife, along with my family went out to lunch and then over to the Capshaholm mansion Christmas tour. It's an extremely large, old home that was donated to the South Bend History Center by the D.J. Oliver family. You can tour the home year round, but during the month of December on Sundays you can go for these special tours where they have actors there that are to be the Oliver family, servants, and other guests from the area of that time period. This year it was a Christmas party from 1925, and the special guests were Mr. Studebaker, Mr. Ford, and Knute Rockne . . . the first ever and most famous Notre Dame football coach. We go every year, not only because it's an extremely neat home to tour, and the actors are neat to see all dressed up, and doing their scenes in the different rooms of the home, but also because my brother is always one of the actors, and this year he got to be the most awesome one of course . . . .Knute Rockne :o) I will say he did an excellent job too. He definitely had one of the most exciting and longest scenes of any of them.

Now we've come back to the house, and are waiting for Kendall and Nancy to join us. That is again, our former pastor and his wife. Nancy is going to teach my mom and I how to make scorpa, which is a Swedish similarity to biscotti. I'm looking forward to it. I've really gotten in to cooking lately as many of you may know, so the more new and exciting things I can learn to make, the better! :o)

Well I hope you have all had a wonderful weekend. I hope to be posting the weekly scripture on here soon as well. Take care!

My Brush With Death

So yesterday I almost died. I had a brush with death, and lets just say I will no longer doubt that God is ever with me because he was certainly with me yesterday. I had just left work, and was on my way to my friend Susans. It had been snowing just a little bit yesterday, but the roads throughout town were just fine. Now I got on the bypass to go just a short distance to get to main drag that goes through downtown. I had just gotten on there, and was not going but maybe 40 or 45 mph and the bypass seemed just fine, when all of a sudden my car started careening out of control. It headed towards the big cement wall off to the side of the bypass. I was doing everything I could to turn it away, but it seemed hopeless. I was sliding all over the place in that direction towards the wall. I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to crash into this wall, but just like 2 inches from the wall I was able to get my turn my car way from it. However then I was spinning around and around out in the middle of the bypass. I did about 2 and half complete 360 degree turns and even went up on two wheels. I was thinking "oh great, I didn't crash into the wall, but now I'm going to tip over!", but I didn't. I finally came to a stop sideways in the middle of the bypass. You could smell the rubber burning on my tires. The whole thing had even stopped my engine, that I had to put in park, and restart it. Then I sat there, frozen, waiting for my heart to get out of my throat, I looked to my left and saw that another car had hit the same patch of black ice I must have and started sliding out of control as well. I thought "great I survived my ordeal to get hit by another car", but they got theirs under control okay and went around me. I got my cart straightened back out and went under way again. Then just down the road a few feet to my exit where I got off there was another car right there that hit a piece of black ice as well that was not as fortunate, and did smash into the cement wall. It was a mustang. They were okay though, as their airbag blew, and you could see the lady standing outside her car on the cell phone. Anyways that was my brush with death. It was extremely scary, and still is thinking about it. Today I discovered I had a flat tire. I must have damaged it some how yesterday in that ordeal, and had been slowly leaking air. So I've had a lot of fun. More like a lot of stress. I'm very thankful though to God for protecting me.