Winding Up

The official wind up for Christmas begins at church this week. We start tonight with the Diaconate team hosting a Chrismon tree decorating dinner. We'll have soup and sandwiches, a short devotion (not led by me) and then go in and decorate the tree. I accepted the request to bring a crock pot of chili (I DO make a pretty good chili, I admit) and decided to bake a loaf of bread to go with it and it's in the oven now, and smelling amazing. Let's hope that I can manage to make it out the door with the camera and then maybe I can have this year's pictures of the little one (who's really not so little any more) by the Chrismon tree again.
Sunday is the children's program, which we'll put on during worship, so that means I don't have to preach--a good thing since I seem to be more tired this week than usual (the dreary, rainy days may be a big part of that) and I can usually find an excuse to come home in the afternoons and take a nap.
Then there's session meeting in a week, then, wow, it's the fourth sunday in advent! that's the week we do gift wrapping for the church's social services christmas family and go caroling afterwards. We'll do a traditional candlelight service of nine lessons and carols on Christmas Eve. I am so proud of my youth, every one of them stepped up, from seven years old on up to seventeen to do a scripture reading that night (ok, so I think some of them were forced by their parents, but still, most of them volunteered)
At home though, we just this week got out the decorations, discovered that P will have to make a new stand for the fake tree that lost a leg in the move and so we probably won't get it up soon since he'll have to make that before we can get it up and he is planning on going out of town to visit his family this weekend so it won't happen then either. Blah. Blah, blah, blah. The tree is the one thing that makes it feel like Christmas for me, at least inside the house. (Outside, it's the neighbors who have had lights up since thanksgiving, covering every square inch of their house and yard--ok, not really, but it's quite a sight!)