Christmas with Friends

"This is my favorite day of Christmas," Sev Friskney said when they arrived for dinner Sunday night. The day before the day before Christmas. It was a good--although a busy--day for us.

The choir wore their formals and tuxes to help lead
our Christmas Sunday worship service.

Evelyn and I did a brief narration as part of the worship services at 9:30 and 11:00 at church in the morning. (I had written it in response to an e-mail from Dave Lautzenheiser asking for ideas to connect two parts of the service.) And this was our Welcome Center Sunday too, so we got to church about 9:00 and stayed till almost 12:30.
John and Mary Jane Burgess came to worship with the church at Mason, and we had a nice visit with them as well as happy "Merry Christmas" greetings with many others in all the time we had to spend in the church lobby Sunday morning.
We grabbed lunch at LaRosa's and I took Evelyn home before heading out to run a couple of errands--last-minute grocery run and a visit to the Honey Baked Ham store.
Then I worked with Evelyn to complete preparations for the Christmas dinner we hosted with friends that evening: roast beef, green beans, Waldorf salad, twice baked potatoes; Evelyn's traditional cheese ball and fresh shrimp for appetizers, along with the cranberry apple hot punch we enjoy making at Christmastime. Since all our Christmas with family will be after "the day" this year, we decided to host this Christmas dinner on the weekend before Christmas.
Sev and Paul Friskney and Verna and Bill Weber came after 5:30 and stayed till almost 11:00. We laughed (even though Bill said it hurt to laugh after gall bladder surgery Thursday) and talked and snapped a couple of pictures before they left.