Decorating

I'm wired this morning. I should be sleepy, but for some reason I'm just excited! Judy Frasier, Bev Kriegl and I worked on decorations last night for the Ladies tea. Paul even helped for an hour with lights that needed to go in the ceiling. Our Tea is Friday night so our goal was to have all the decorating done last night so we wouldn't feel stressed at the last minute. Well we had to wait to start until Word of Life was done at 8pm and we were there till 1am! As we were loading up our cars, Bev said, "wow I sure didn't think we'd be here this long- it's almost 1am"! I was thinking it was a good thing I didn't know what time it was or I'd of gotten tired alot sooner:-) Then I came home and lied in bed thinking of everything and thought, I better go back in tomorrow just to make sure we didn't forget anything. Oh and I had put these beads in the glass votive cups and decided at 2am that that wasn't a good idea cause they might get hot and cause a fire since the beads are plastic. So I was already at church changing that this morning. It was alot of fun and the three of us worked really well together. I can't wait to see it all lit up. We don't use any regular lights for the tea- it's all by candlelight or lanterns. We have this awesome guy coming from Chicago to do a drama of Jesus' life. He came to our church this summer and did a first person reinactment of Peter and it was phenomenal. You always really remember the scripture and story when you see it like that and it feels like you were right there in bible times. I'm so excited for the tea! It's going to be so great! Hopefully we'll have lots of visitors. Our church has been doing the tea for 50 some years and has always been a free community outreach meaning there is no offering taken. It's a night to feel really special just being a lady and people from all denominations come to it. I can't wait till Friday!

Tonight we get to see Tyler play his sax in his first band concert. He played his bass in orchestra concerts last year, so it'll be similar, but we haven't heard him with the whole band yet. My neice, Tiffany, is also in band- I think she plays the clarinet and she's also in sixth grade so they'll be together. Joy gets to kill two birds with one stone tonight:0) This time of year is so busy for her with all the grandkids school programs, etc, but her grandkids are getting older too so as time goes on she'll have less and less to go to. Once the kids get to the middle school- all they have are either band or orchestra concerts during Christmas time.

A couple of weeks ago, Katia had her friend Heather over after school and then she came to Word of Life with us. Well, last night, do you know that she called us up and asked if she could come again? That sure blessed my heart. After club she asked me if she can keep coming with us. She lives on our way to town so it's easy enough to pick her up. Usually when the kids bring friends, they might come once or twice, but it's never happened that they call us up and ask if they can go. Tyler and Katia usually have to do the asking. So I think Katia was pretty happy too. She does have two other friends that come on the van too and they have been coming all year and one girl came last year as well. For the longest time, the kids group was almost all boys and Katia was bummed. We have 35 kids and the majority now are girls. I hope someday we'll get another youth pastor so that these kids can keep going on this path through the hardest teen years. Our program only goes up to sixth grade and then we have a Jr. High and Sr. High youth group that one of our deacons(Darren) organizes and he does an awesome job, but we lost alot of teens when our youth pastor moved.

Well, I've rambled on enough. I have dishes to do and the laundry is ever constant. Have a good day!