Looking Forward to the Holidays

Hooray! I love Holidays and I'm enjoying being the homemaker who can decorate and host others. We just finished up a fun day with the little construction workers dressed for the Hallelujah Party at the chapel - October 31st. Nathaniel hopped and bopped in the bounce houses until he was totally tuckered out and then went to bed at home so nicely! Yeah, no sweet-induced night-time antics for us.

I've attached a few photos of the little construction workers. Nathaniel called himself "George" all day - I guess he thinks that's the name of a construction worker?!

For Thanksgiving, we booked tickets and a cottage to stay in Cambridge, England for a weekend. I look forward to the fellowship and conversation with the friends we will join there. Not one of them is married or has kids, so I hope they enjoy our conversation and fellowship! They did invite us to join them, though.

For Christmas, I look forward to concerts at church (we have some super instrumentalists on our praise team) and Christmas Eve meditation service. We get to help plan these services, which makes me happy because I love to plan music and learn new songs to praise! And we just pooled together to get 6 airline tickets for all the Katzenbergers to come join us here after Christmas. Now I just have to figure out where to put them all.

You'll be seeing a few new blogs I've been reading, books, wish-lists, and other stuff on the side of this blog as I update for the Holidays and read up about the newest gadgets for kids and ways to host happy Holidays. I "brined" a turkey for the last 2 days and roasted it this morning for the pot-luck at Tom's work. I was pretty pleased with the delicious moist flavor. ("Brining" is really the way to go - just soak the bird in lots of salty water, a few whole herbs of choice, a couple cups of liquor of choice and voila - you've got brine!).

I look forward to trying new recipes and sipping hot mochas with you, if you'll be here, or via Skype. Please give us a call sometime, I'd really love to have your company. We are often busy with weekend travels, but we lack deep friendships, and I still really miss my friends and family and feel loneliness creep in whenever I think of each of you.