Merry Christmas everyone.

Thanks for putting up with the multiple blogs. As one last post for today, I wanted to share with you what we did last evening.

Two families from a small group we have formed at church, and Elaine and John came over for Christmas caroling. I made three kinds of soups and "Redneck Brownies". Janelle brought homeade rolls. We had hot apple cider and all of us were ready for a wonderful evening.

The evening did not start out so wonderful. One of the Lusk children fell off of our trapeze downstairs. Her little wrist started to swell immediately and the short of it is, she broke her arm. The Lusks had to get her to the ER, so they could not join us. I sent lots of soup home with them and we prayed over the little ones wrist. We are hoping for the best and her grandpa (a physician) said that she might not need a cast.

The rest of us warmed up our voices and got ready to sing. We sounded really good if I do say so myself. It helps that we were all musicians or the offspring of musicians. We went to folks we knew. I baked many, many loaves of bread, so everyone got a loaf of pumpkin or cranberry bread and a song or two. It was very interesting watching the reaction of the folks as they came to their door. One neighbor gave us cookies. Our Indian neighbors invited us in. All were thankful.

A couple of families really touched our hearts. One of our neighbors has a set of autistic twin boys. One of them came to the door and yelled "Merry Christmas everyone". On our way out he yelled "thanks for the fruitcake". Precious.

Another neighbor has a 13 year old son, dying of cancer. It blessed us to bless them.

Another neighbor looked at us and said "Thanks for coming. We really needed this". Enough said.

Christmas. A time to receive, but also a time to give. I thought of the Christmas spirit my sister spoke of earlier this week. I think last night, we caught a bit of it. Just like a Hallmark commercial, towards the end of our caroling, it started to snow. Big, fat, fluffy flakes. I was thinking that God was saying "well done".

We came home, filled our tummies with soup and cider. Our souls were filled with Christmas and the company of each other. It is truly better to give than receive.

Merry Christmas everyone.