My lack of stress might bite me in the butt the day before Christmas, as things are still just humming along in our household and I’m rolling with the punches. Many things aren’t getting done as usual, but my “Oh, well!” attitude works just fine. I refuse to take back the gift of NO STRESS I’m giving God during this Advent season. I got the last of my Christmas cards out today. I hope they all make it in time, but if not, oh well!
Kory had two days worth of tests to see why he’s still getting angina. I’m trying not to get angina waiting for the reports to come back. I think the doctor must be off on vacation or something as we haven’t heard a word. Life goes on. But today we did get good news about the 11 year old daughter of a friend of ours who had a cancerous tumor removed from behind her ear – her tests came back with a good report that the cancer hadn’t spread. There were many HALLELUJAHs after that bit of news.
This past week has been full of celebrations and activities and time at my computer has been limited. We had a little kick-off party for a Bible study I’m going to attend after the first of the year, with Grammy J at the helm (see photo of 4 out of the 5 of us lovin' on her.) I’m more excited about getting together with that group of women than I have been about anything for a long time. Twice a month we’ll be soaking in God’s presence and His word – Hallelujah!
Friday we attended Bethany Covenant Church’s Christmas musical – which was outstanding in all ways. What a blessing to be part of a church with so much talent. Saturday Kory and I went to separate parties – he to a gathering with fellow Avanti lovers (he’s joined an Avanti club recently), and I attended a gathering of some old high school classmates (I failed to attend our 35th reunion this summer so my guilt got the better of me.) Kaleb stayed the night with a friend while Kory and I were as social as we could be.
Sunday was a big day not just for us, but for many families in the Skagit Valley. A woman in our home fellowship group found out about an organization in the Northwest that doesn’t just need money to buy food for starving kids in Africa, they need help assembling the food packets as well. We were looking for a project to do with our kids to get them involved in missions, and this was just the ticket. We raised money for the past three months (Kaleb contributed exactly $300 of his earnings), and all totaled, over $32,000 came in from churches, organizations and individuals, which bought over 130,000 meals, which all got packaged up in about three hours on Sunday with 486 volunteers working as fast as they could (see other photo!) It was quite the process and a great bonding moment for many. The third world countries the food goes to won’t allow the raw food to be shipped in since it might affect the price of rice, etc., so they must be packaged before shipment. The packets contained lentils, spices, a chicken broth/protein powder mix and rice. Kaleb took a lot of ownership around the event and did 10 of the 11 possible jobs that day and was pumped when it was done. We’re not sure if it will be an annual event or not, but it was fun while it lasted.
Yesterday we had our traditional downtown Seattle day so we were gone all day. We brought along a friend of Kaleb’s so that made it a bit more special. His friend put some perspective to the day when he was thrilled just to be able to ride an escalator. Kaleb has no idea how lucky he is. We took the monorail into downtown and had a photo with Santa, rode the carousel at Westlake Center, spent time at the downtown library, watched the trains at the Center house and the snow inside Pacific Place. We saw the gingerbread houses at the Sheraton and the Teddy Bear room at the Four Seasons. I even did some last minute shopping (with no stress or lines!) and on the way home we stopped in Ballard to see a neighborhood full of Christmas lights. I loved the whole day, but Kaleb was starting to act a bit bored with the routine. Can’t wait for his teenage years.
Today Kory and Kaleb went skiing up at Mt. Baker with another friend of Kaleb's and the youth group t our church. I stayed home and didn’t stress about a thing. I got a few packages wrapped, went to a prayer meeting and did some banking. The list of things needing to be done is so long, if I think about it I’ll get stressed so I best stop here while the smile is still on my face from thinking about all the fun I’ve had this past week. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good rest.
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