The Day Before Christmas

We decided to spiff up to go to dinner and read
Scripture at the Christmas Eve services.

The day before Christmas was a wonderful day for us!
For starters, we spent the whole day, till evening, at home--not one errand, not one trip to a store or a grocery. We just listened to Christmas music while we took care of other tasks around the house. And I read in a book a little and took a 10-minute nap in the afternoon.
We ate leftovers from our dinner the previous evening for lunch and saved up so we'd be hungry for what we anticipated would be a wonderful dinner.
It was! Due to the generosity of some friends who lavished much more appreciation on me than I deserved, we had a gift certificate at Eddie Merlot's, a fine restaurant on the northeast side of town that I'd always thought about going to someday. Since we were alone, we decided it would be the perfect spot for our Christmas Eve dinner.
It was! Homemade crab cakes for appetizer. A remarkable chopped salad (with artichokes) to share. Evelyn had cedar planked salmon with spinach and fingerling potatoes and I had the 6-ounce filet and a side order of mushrooms. All of it was delectable. Our reservation was at 7:00, and we had promised to be at the church by 9:00. It was a leisurely dinner, and we decided we'd better not take time for dessert. They gave us a red velvet cupcake with cream cheese icing to take with us, and we ate it before bed after attending two Christmas Eve services at the church.

Kim blessed us with a remarkable
rendition of "O Holy Night"

Dave Lautzenheiser had asked us to read Scriptures for the two Christmas Eve services (9:30 and 11:00), and we enjoyed doing it. Kim Rodarmel sang "O Holy Night," and Greg Henderson accompanied "Silent Night" on the bells --he soloed on about two octaves of them, first playing the melody and then playing chord and descant accompaniments. Mark Sullivan and Brad Wilson spoke--I've never heard them do better. We sat with Dan and Cindi Cooper at the first service and then left after our readings at the second service. It was all very nice.
We took a long way home and looked at Christmas lights on the way, and Evelyn made her applesauce Jello before we went to bed. Three generations of Webers are coming to eat with us at 2:30 today.
We had nice phone visits with Jennifer and then with Geoff late in the afternoon before getting ready to go to dinner.
The day before Christmas was a very good day!