Company Girl Coffee 12.18

On Fridays I link up with the Company Girls for our weekly blog-chat.

Well, it was a late night. The diet coke is in hand early today. It was the type of night that is typical around the holidays. Bet you've had a few as well. Gifts to wrap and get in the mail. Friend/neighbor gifts to assemble and make. Teacher gifts to wrap. All needing to be done by the next day.

And in our case...finally get the outside decorations up. It's a long story why they aren't up yet...but since we have our groupies Christmas party at our house tonight, we wanted to finish the decorating. Right now we look like the scrooge on the block. Our outdoor decorations are not elaborate...lighted garland and wreaths mostly. We pulled the garland out of the box and then remembered that we threw away our lighted wreaths last year cause they had taken a beating. Stink. We ran out to the store to buy more. Target was out. Double stink. As we stood there figuring out what to do--a woman I know from Bible Study came over to say hi and chat. When we told her what we were up to--she said she had three brand new wreaths that she didn't want. They were out in her car. She gave them to us! What a neat blessing. We only needed one more and walmart came through.

However, as the night projects went on...the real late night culprit was Pickle. She had schoolwork that kept her up until 1 am! No...there was no procrastination involved. (wink, wink) We weren't frustrated with her. (wink, wink) We had NO idea she had so much left to do. Overall, God allowed us to have much grace and encouragement instead of our typical lecture. We had left an awful lot to do that night too... I waited up with her and helped her wrap her friends' gifts before we hit the sack. Can someone PLEASE point me to the caffiene IV??

Today, I have a L.O.N.G. list to accomplish to be get gifts off in the mail and be ready for our friends tonight. It's all fun stuff...just a lot. I'm happy to do it all--just hope it all fits in! I'm looking forward to celebrating with the groupies tonight.

Our life has been busy and full since last Friday. The funeral for our church friend was sad, but lovely. We got the church reset to dessert theater in record time. My kids did a great job in the performances Friday and Saturday night. Sunday morning our kids choir did a great job in spite of their swearing. Monday night Pickle rocked a baritone solo at her band concert.

But best of all for me--my Mary talk is DONE. Thank you SO much for your prayers...I really felt them. I didn't have much time to memorize, but God was faithful and allowed it to go pretty well. I mean, I know I messed up some--but no one else could really tell. I left different parts out both services (accidentally), and am choosing to believe that God was tailoring the message to each group. :o) I am posting my talk for those of you who asked. You can start reading here. Or you can listen here. (it's 24 minutes). The feedback has been more than I deserve, and appreciate people going out of their way to encourage me. God gave me words that many needed. He's SO cool like that.

Well girls...off to conquer the day with high hopes of enjoying all the busy-nuttiness.

I wish you all the most blessed of Christmases. Starting to blog and getting to "know" all my bloggie friends has been a highlight of 2009! Let's try together to be present in all the moments of this week.