It isn't snowing snow... it's snowing violetsssss

First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR! Secondly, I wrote up a lengthy post and the computer jammed (again). My computer has been freezing way too much lately. Yesterday it took about 5 restarts. David said it's just too cold here. Haha. So I had a really nice post, but as I said, it got lost. SNIFF!!! I was going to rewrite it right away, but then I drove Grandfather to Home Depot. By the way, MY CAMERA IS BACK!!!!! (Can you tell?) Yayness!

Anyway, I'm going to try to rewrite what I wrote before... the wedding was fine. I didn't get any inspirational ideas, though. My phone was on silent so I missed Julie's call. She called to see if Andy and I wanted to come over cuz Pastor and Mrs Carlson went to the reception. So we ate dinner and turned around and went back to their house. We watched one and a half episodes of Andy Griffith and then Andrew went to bed. (Sheryl had gone to watch Narnia with the Vroegindeweys) Julie, Andy, and I played Scattergories until Sheryl came home.

Saturday we didn't do much. We went over to Aunt Annie's for dinner to watch a documentary on Becker's Train (in Roseland) and also "Holiday Inn." (Keen, if you're reading this and don't already know, it's with Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby.) I left around 10 but Gmother and Gfather stayed to watch "Little House Christmas." They actually went to bed around midnight!!! I think I was the first in bed...

Sunday was really good. Pastor Dunn preached in the SS and morning service ("Solid Hope in a Tsunami World" and "Kingdom Service.") The Singhs came for lunch because it's ECH day. I went with Andy... wow, I bet that hospital was beautiful in its day. Too bad the buildings are all run down. My first thought was that it would be a perfect spot to shoot a war movie. Anyway, Andy did the Scripture reading, I played the piano, and David preached. He's pretty good -- connects well with them. (Oh yeah, the ECH ministry is to the mental hospital people) It was nice and warm in there too.

Pastor Tracey preached in the evening. He preached on John 10. Wow, another really good sermon. His first point was that God loves His own Son. He made the point that we tend to only think of the gospel in a selfish way -- "God loves me" not noticing that God loves His Son and that is how we are caught in the embrace --> election. You are the gift of the Father to the Son. The Son obeys the Father and pays the price to make us His own. This is already agreed between the heart of the Father and the heart of the Son. His last point was that the Holy Spirit loves the Son and will bring you to the Son -- caught up in the embrace of the Trinity. Pastor Tracey made the point that the phrase, "I have decided to follow Jesus" is true, but only because the Trinity embraced you. His application to those in Christ was: do not live in such a way as to make this glorious gospel look like cheap grace -- God forbid that we should treat this grace as though it were cheap. For those not in Christ: you must not shrug your shoulders saying, "I don't know if the Father has chosen me," but rather, you must believe.

After the sermon, I was hanging around talking and Andy, the social butterfly, comes up and wants to leave!!! Good grief! He's the one who doesn't ever want to leave! I only have 2 Sunday evenings left for a while, so I wanted to stay. Anyway, after a while, I got the idea to ask Kait to sleep over! (She started her wonderful winter session today) Sooo Andy was complaining about how he could have gone home awhile ago. But he eventually left and I waited for Mrs Bonsell to stop talking and Kait drove us all home. She got her stuff and we went back here.

Believe it or not, we didn't talk until stupid hours of the night. In fact, I fell asleep on Kait who didn't fall asleep for another hour! Haha. I fell asleep at 1 and was woken up by someone crashing down the stairs (guess who... more about that on the tattle blog) but promptly went back to sleep. Kait hung around Monday until about 3... we were goofing off talking to Hannah, laughing hysterically over despair.com (Mr. Birkett's favorite site), and stuff like that.

Last night I had every good intention to go to bed early.... but it didn't happen. I ended up going to bed at um... 2am. Haha. Cuz I was doing something and then David came home from school and we chatted for a while and then he started playing the guitar so I got him to skype me so I could hear... he was singing and playing for a while and then Pastor Nene played for a bit and Tita Ophelia came in and started playing as well. They were all waiting for Calvin to come home (he went to IngOng's (I think) to play Warcraft). That was fun...

Gmother is taking down the Christmas decorations... and the tree is goooone. Oh and it snowed most of the day too. Now it's kind of a mix of snow and rain... Gas prices are going up. Yesterday Caldwell Gas Stop was at $2.15 and now it's $2.19. On the way back from Home Depot I went down by the Grover Cleveland Birthplace because the gas is cheaper there ($2.09). I was almost empty so I had to fill the whole tank up. (I hate doing that. It's very depressing... I usually fill it up when it's half empty (or half full), it's not as shocking.)

Oh yes, did I mention we went to Marty's on Thursday after bowling? The Traceys were looking for shoes for Anna. Anyway I found boots. They're cloddy, but WIDE. That's what counts. John wanted to know if I need a heel like that cuz I'm short.

Anyway, I'm making Adobo tonight for dinner. The End!!!