What a Great Friday and Saturday!

Friday I flew down to Raleigh, NC with a friend to visit another friend who is battling cancer (I wrote about her in an earlier post). We flew down in the morning and came back in the early evening. I am so glad we did this. It was great to see our friend - we toured Raleigh, went out to a wonderful restaurant, and went back to our friend's house and just talked. It was a gift to myself - to see my friend as she battles this disease, and how she is doing during the recovery process. I'm sure we will do this again in the near future.

Saturday was a very busy day. I left the house at 9:30 and didn't really return until 8:30 in the evening. I went to two cookie exchange parties. For the past three years, these parties have fallen on the same day - bring six dozen cookies to the party, exchange with everyone else there, and take home six dozen cookies. But, when you do two in one day, you get to bring home twelve dozen cookies! Cookies of all different shapes, sizes, flavors (chocolate, spice, ginger, sugar, etc., etc., etc.). I love this day every year. It's fun to catch up with people you haven't seen in awhile, or to visit with friends you see regularly, but may not have the one-on-one time to visit with them. I love the expertise of these home bakers - some try new recipes every year and some bring tried and true recipes from their childhood (always with interesting stories about the history of the cookies). Both of these parties are very different. The first party is more relaxed, with time to visit with one another; the second party is a noisy event, with lots of other activities taking place, but I always find someone to talk to who I haven't seen for some time, and it's fun to catch up with them.

Following the cookies exchanges, I raced over to pay my respects at a funeral home. A work colleague lost her mother and I had to give her a hug, if only for a brief moment. It's so sad when people die during the holiday season.

I raced home to pick up the desserts I was bringing to our church's annual Christmas party. And, because of my exceptionally busy day, I actually bought the desserts instead of making them. I think that's a first for me. We had a delicious dinner, and I think the program afterward was good, but a good friend and I were trying to enter monthly data into the computer system, and we missed the program! We did get to see Jolly Old Saint Nick arrive to talk with the children and give them a candy cane. The looks on the kid's faces and the excitement in their eyes was so fun to see. I'm looking forward to talking with them about it in our Sunday School class.

Now, for a little bragging. I'm new to the world of blogging, and setting up a blog. As anyone can see, I haven't written too much since I started this many months ago. But, the other day, while visiting someone else's blog, I thought it would be fun to attach a "widget" to my blog. I followed the explanation on this other person's blog, and lo and behold, I was able to attach the widget to my own blog. There's a little video on it, and when I click to play the video, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was singing a song we are practicing for our Christmas program. It was nice to hear how this song is supposed to sound (and fun to see all the women in that choir sing the song - our entire choir is singing, men and women). But the fact that I was able to add this to my blog gives me hope that I'll be able to be more creative with the look of the blog in the future. Maybe I can get Denise to give me some more pointers when she arrives with her family next week to celebrate the holidays with us.

So, now it's Sunday and I'm about to get ready for church. Maybe we'll visit the Temple Visitor's Center tonight to see the Christmas decorations. Maybe by the end of the evening, the tree will be decorated. We did wrap some presents yesterday, so we could get the Mudgett's box in the mail so they get their gifts before Christmas. Only a little more shopping to do. With company coming, I guess I have to get moving and clean up the house. Hope everyone has a great holiday season.