Okay, I know I've been pretty negligent about posting my blogs lately. In fact, I have a lot of drafts but just haven't gotten around to posting them yet. When I do beware, there's quite a few! For now here's the details on my Thanksgiving break.

Thanksgiving day was wonderful. A family from church whose son and daughter I babysat this summer invited me and some other members of our church to lunch. I was originally supposed to keep the kids occupied but they were sleeping so I ended up helping out with preparing the food. It was really good to just spend time with them-I don't think I'd ever just spent time with the two of them before. I also perfected my crescent roll making skills!

Dinner, dinner conversation and fellowship was great as well. During dessert some of us started talking about dancing and I mentioned that I was wanting to find a serious dancer to practice with. Tanner suggested someone who is apparently a really good dancer and lured me into going to a party during the weekend that I wasn't invited to , whose location I was unsure of and the time he didn't remember. Since I was promised a very good dancer that I was looking forward to befriending I sucked up my pride and decided to go. I went home and had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with Ky and Laur.

Laur and I spent Black Friday shopping. I've finally got a digital camera I'd been saving and waiting for so now you can expect more pictures on my blog (maybe a lot less words too) and I can document my work better and more easily. Laur and I were out for 7 hours! She didn't purchase anything and I felt kind of bad until we stopped at Lowe's where her spirits were lifted and her creative juices started flowing as she picked out a Christmas tree and I got to help her decide on some other jolly holiday decorations for the house.

It was quite entertaining to watch the girl who had just hours before needed caffeine to stay awake, joyfully (and unashamedly) skipping merrily through the aisles of Lowe's as onlookers observed, I smiled and thought- that's our Lauren! At least I was able to return the favor and amuse her because while we were outside looking for trees I saw a mouse, screamed and ran. She took a picture and it took her a while to stop laughing. When we finally got home and Ky asked what we'd brought her it couldn't be put any better than Lauren's joyous exclamation, "We brought home Christmas!"

Later that evening Ky, Laur and I decorated our Christmas tree.





So after trying my hand at that lovely fruit salsa and cinnamonsugar chips recipe I got from Li, I overcame my fear of crashing the party of someone I don't even know and got to the party, late with Ky in tow. We had a blast! It was a lot of fun, because aside from the girls and 2 guys from Thanksgiving lunch I didn't really know the host or anyone else well. We broke up into 2 groups who played Scrabble and Perudo, a peruvian dice game.

I was not very good at it and everyone amazingly figured out my strategy (which was to look under my cup and call whatever I had when it was my turn to bid).


Here's a few pics I took of of the two groups engrossed in their games.


Today, my pastor preached from 2 Peter 2:10-22 about apostasy. I was challenged to beware of nominal Christianity by trusting only in God's spirit to work in me to remain steadfast, constantly be humble and fearful before the Lord, pray for others and myself. I was also convicted about the use of my money and how I should be using it more to give to God's service and less for my personal pleasures and gains. I need to make a point to pray that I not love the things God gives more than Christ Himself.