What a weekend. It actually started on Thursday with me having a 24 hour stomach virus, I won't describe what that means, I think we all know. On Friday I felt a lot better with Earl suprising me with saying we could go to the mall and other stores to do shopping that Dad had asked me to do for the girls. We hadn't been to the mall since last April. However Earl's Christmas giving spirit LEFT when we hit the second store and had 3 more to go to. However to defend his scruge attitude he had got up at 3:00am that morning and after supper was in his belly he became tired. In a couple of stores he had to have the girls all to himself while for the next 20 minutes they would ask over and over "Where's Mommy""Is she done yet". This also could contributed to the mental breakdown.
Then on Saturday was our Sunday school Christmas party. We went on the back of a wagon caroling for different people around town. Sammi fell asleep and had Earl not caught her as she fell asleep she could have rolledbackwards off the wagon. She wanted to sit by herself and the area she sat in was the only place that an adult wasn't sitting behind her. I then took her held her the rest of the way. (5 mores houses). We then went back and had a ham dinner. I thought of Sunday dinners at Gana's and Gladys's, no good homemade rolls.
On Sunday was the children's play at church. Except that morning all 4 of us woke up at 4:00am and stayed awake. It was horrible. The kids have never done this before, but after we got to church we found out that a handful of other people had done the same thing. Sammi fell asleep during the play
Beth did a great job with her play and you couldn't even tell if she was nervous or not. At one point she was putting her left fingers around her right fingers and looking at the size of the hole it made. When I asked her about it she said "I just wondered how big of a hole my different fingers would make" She did this during her solo.
Over all it was a good weekend. Last nights church service was to be each family coming to church and the head of the family would talk about Christmas and our memories of Christmas, then we would receive communion. Dad had signed up our family for 5:00 and when Beth and I got there the preacher told me that no one else was coming, not even Dad. We were going to leave but Beth had never received communion before and wanted to very badly. She asked Jesus into her heart last Christmas season, so I saw no problem with it. I thought that it would have been very special for Dad to have done it but I tried to fill in the gap. My preachers wife Debbie and our assistant Pastor Ann came in and joined us. It was special even though it wasn't exactly what I had envisioned. We got to learn a little bit more about Debbie and Ann and maybe grow a little closer as friends and I got to serve Beth her first communion. Special.
So now we are getting ready for Christmas, going to stay all night at Dad's on Christmas Eve with my brother and wife and all of us. We will also have a candle lit service at church Wed. Then spend some of Christmas day with Dad opening packages and eating. Then going back to our house to recover and let the girls play. I am letting Beth have this week off from school though the original plans was to make her keep working I have found that I need the week off just like she does.
Today we are going to a friends house to make cookies and let the kids play. The great thing about the season is that it is making March come all the sooner. Then Suzy will be here and things can be completely chaotic hahaha