Busy weekend

Couldn't really think of a better title. It was just a busy weekend. Saturday I did the usual work thing in the morning, and Jane was baking cookies for church Sunday and making food for the weekend. Plus we had a wedding Saturday night (just to attend, not to perform). And to top things off, my parents arrived Saturday too. There was a friends & family baby shower for Carrie Sunday and my mom brought my dad along. They arrived about 10 minutes before Jane and I had to leave for the wedding Saturday evening/afternoon.

This was the first wedding we'd been to where they had the ceremony and reception all in the same room. It was at the old train station in Fort Wayne. It was really neat too. The acoustics in that place are terrible though. I couldn't hear a thing all night. Not only was the music - and anything amplified - terrible, but with the music playing in the background I could barely hear what anyone at our table was saying either. It made my ears hurt. But it was a good time nonetheless and I'm glad we were invited, and went. It started raining on our way to the wedding and rained all night - until it turned to snow in the wee hours of the morning. At least it was still 39 F when we got home at 8 pm. That quickly changed overnight.

My parents drove in rain the entire way from Buda. They arrived about 3:30 pm Saturday. They brought our Christmas presents, and we gave them theirs. We all got money, and Jane and I gave my mom a bag to keep all her scrapbooking stuff in, as well as some fancy tea; and we gave my dad a family picture of us (framed) and a wireless indoor/outdoor weather station thing.

It started snowing early Sunday morning, and of course the weather people were predicting the storm of the century. It didn't really amount to much. There wasn't a lot of snow, but it was blowing and whatnot. Anyway, we had the worship gathering in the morning, and it snowed during the entire thing. I was the only one who could see it, as I'm the only one able to see out while I'm preaching. After church we headed to Azar's in Waynedale with mom and dad and Drew Carrie. Then we took mom and dad by the house we're interested in, and then went to Drew Carrie's to show them their house for the first time. We left the women there so they could attend the baby shower at 2 pm, and dad and I went home. I took a 15-minute power nap, then headed over to the church to get ready for the supper and tree-decorating that night.

It actually started to look like it was going to clear off in the afternoon, but then as dad and I headed to town to get the spaghetti for the church supper it started snowing and blowing like crazy again. We arrived at Casa's to get the food about 15 minutes before it was supposed to be ready (Jane had called and ordered it ahead of time on Friday). It was a good thing we were early, because they had somehow forgotten about it - or never gave the ticket to the kitchen, or something - so they hustled and hurried and we still had the 2 big pans of spaghetti and 2 pans of salad right on time. Then we slipped and slid across town to pick up my mom, Jane and Carrie and bring them back to the church. Drew was coming later because he had a volleyball game in the afternoon. We got to the church at 5:10 pm and Carrie and I unloaded the food, then we had Cantata practice at 5:30 pm. The roads were continuing to get worse and worse, and Drew had a heck of a time getting there from the north side of town. He was late for practice, and several people missed it altogether. We finally decided to stop when people started showing up for the decorating and supper.

At 7 pm we started with the tree decorating. The only Christmas decorations we have in the church are a couple banners and a tree. So each year we have everyone bring an ornament from home and we decorate the tree as "ours." Each family comes forward and tells why they chose the ornament they did - whether they bought it, made it, or just brought one from home - then they hang it wherever they want on the tree. I really like doing this. It makes it totally ours. Rather than having a committee who decides how everything should be done, or having a "hanging of the greens" where we 'say' we're going to decorate - only to have a few specific people come early and do the actual decorating. Anyway, I was pretty surprised that we had like 35 people show up - especially since the weather was so bad. Afterward we all went downstairs and ate spaghetti and listened to Christmas music and chatted. It was a pretty good time, and, again, I couldn't believe that many people actually came out on such a terrible night.

After that, Drew Carrie came over and that's when we exchanged presents with my parents. Then we laid around and played with Lady and watched the Cowboys get beat.

Jane got a ride to work today with Steve & Pam, and my parents left around 8:30 this morning. It looks like the sun might actually shine here. I am a little tired and for some reason it feels like this should now be the weekend. Oh well. This afternoon I am supposed to go pick up our new cat, then I will pick up Jane when she gets off work. Let the fun begin.

Peace out; and in.