More December Shenanigans

On Sunday, the 22nds, we had our Contact Christmas. Contact is our more contemporary service. The Contact band plays and sings and some of our pastors tell a story in between. David, in the red vest below, is our executive pastor BUT he actually majored in art in college. One of his talents is to paint upside down and then flip it.

He painted Mary and baby Jesus. After the service, they auctioned off the two paintings (from two services) and the money went toward our manger offering (goes to outside ministries).

It was a great service and Glenn and his family, including granddaughter #1's other grandmothers, came to worship with us.

Mark and I attended Christmas Eve Eve service which is the same as Christmas Eve. We have so many people who want to attend that we have multiple services with the same music, etc. I worked on Christmas Eve so Mark came in time for worship and brought out neighbors, Lu and Dave with him.

Lu is a teacher and she teaches at a school where Matthew and Emma attended when they were babies/preschool age.

Mark and I are crazy about Matthew and Emma  and they are in our Tuesday night group! Lu wanted a quick snapshot with them.

Below is Brian, our senior pastor and my boss, as he talks/preaches at one of the bajillion services.

This is a shot from someone in the choir loft looking out at the congregation. We had a lot of folks over the course of 6:00 p.m. on the 23rd (the one Mark and I attended) plus 11:00 am on Christmas Eve morning - family service where kids can dress up as Mary and Joseph, etc.; plus 1:00, 3:00, 5:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve PLUS 11:00 pm on Christmas Eve. Lots of services and lots of people.

On Christmas morning, it was just the two of us. We opened the few presents we bought for each other.

Look at the bow Mark made with pipe cleaners :-).

We then headed over to our friend's house. They, too, were alone so the four of us had breakfast together at 8:30.

After a couple of hours at their house, we headed to Mark's twin brother's house to be with some of our family.

We left there and headed to the Lakeshore Rehab hospital bearing plates of food for Bill and Rebecca. I did not take any photos at that stop.

After that, we were wiped out so we took a nap and then got ready to go again. This was the year we needed to stay busy.

We headed to our son's home. He lives about 40 minutes away. As we started up the street to his house, we could see emergency lights flashing. A child was driving a golf cart and flipped it RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR SON'S HOUSE. A 3 year old child ended up UNDER the golf cart. Our son's next door neighbors ran out and pulled the golf cart off the child and carried her inside The lady who lives next door is a Nurse Anesthetist so she worked on stabilizing the child. A bone was sticking out of the child's leg -- but it could have been so much worse. Oh my goodness - I hugged our granddaughter so tightly.

Our sweet daughter-in-law made a gorgeous charcuterie board for us to graze on and our granddaughter showed us all of the things she received for Christmas.

They have chickens and all of the chickens want to huddle up on this one tiny section. They have to literally carry the chickens to their coop.

We left their home and drove back toward town and headed to Nathan's family Christmas party. This Christmas Day Night family party has been going on for a LONG time. Mark has 11 first cousins and they are all invited plus their families. Nathan has moved into a new home so we were able to check it out and it is lovely!

Nathan had the whole house decorated beautifully!

The oldest cousin will be celebrating her 50th wedding anniversary at the end of the month, so her daughter brought an anniversary cake. See cake below!!

More to come . . .