Christmas Weekend

Last night, (Saturday) was our family Christmas party. Taking a few ideas from the Marysville FMC annual party, we decorated sugar cookies, had a special story, made crafts, sang, and had a visit from Santa. Vaughn added a Christmas quiz which was a fun competition to guess the top 5 carols, songs, toys, worst gifts, and movies.


Church attendance this morning was up as the college students and one of the young men who just finished boot camp are home.  The "boy band" plus Vaughn played during first service.  It was great to have the added instruments.  





Christmas Caroling

The last few days have been filled with fun and memorable activities.  Wednesday night the youth and others who just wanted to join in went caroling to some of the special members of our congregation.  Those they visited have lost loved ones in the last month, others have been ill or just needed some Christmas cheer.


Faith enjoying treats at the Copelands after caroling

A fun group!



 







Mystery of the Peace Poster

In October, Faith, through her art class, prepared to enter a peace poster contest.  She worked really hard on coming up with a unique design as you can see below.  However, when it came time to turn in her poster, it had disappeared!  She was quite disappointed and concerned because that also meant her teacher had nothing to grade.  It didn't turn up, but because her art teacher had seen her work on it, he didn't allow it to affect her grade.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago when Faith and I were in the public library.  As we walked into the children's section, Faith exclaimed, "There's my peace poster!"  It was up on the wall with several other posters.  We don't know the story of how it got there, but we're just glad it showed up! 

Can you identify the various landmarks?

Sutherlin Christmas Festival 2012

December 15th was a busy Saturday!  It was the day of the Christmas Festival.  We first dropped off the van at Les Schwab to get new tires, and then walked to the community center which was all decorated with 21 trees.  Different businesses, organizations and churches sponsored  trees and decorated them.  Our Calapooia Free Methodist Church tree was quite impressive!  Betty, the church secretary, is the creative genius each year.  This year the tree was "Polar Express" and was flocked with a miniature train that circled the tree.  Faith and Vaughn helped her decorate it on Friday. 

People who attend the festival vote on the best tree and our church won again for the 4th year.  The trees are all given to needy families in the community.    The afternoon had games for the kids to try, face painting and lots of yummy food!  The highlight of course was having a picture taken with Santa and Mrs. Claus.  What made that even more special is that Dale and Margie from our church were this North Pole couple.

Faith and Griffin with  Mrs. Claus and Santa

The trees lined the walls of the community center

Griffin playing a game with Pastor Stewart (the Christmas Tree)

A few hours later, Griffin's cub scout troop sang Christmas songs for the residents at Applegate Assisted Living Community while they ate dinner.

After our own quick dinner at home, Griffin and I were off to the Light Parade.  The cub scouts had a lit up flatbed trailer pulled by a pickup.  We knew we needed to meet on Taylor Street, but when we got to Taylor, we didn't see anyone.  I drove around a little more, looking for a long line of decorated, lit up floats and ended up back at Taylor which is a very long street that eventually curves around by the freeway.  We found the line up, but the problem was they were already moving and the cub scouts were somewhere in the middle.  (This was what the police officer told me since he was last in line.) We moved at a snail's pace for a while (behind the police car) and then I told Griffin we were going to park the van and then run to try and catch up.  I thought that because the parade (which hadn't reached Central Ave. yet) was moving so slowly that we could do it!

As my Grandpa Wiley used to say, "Oh Mercy!"  It was cold, raining slightly and the floats kept moving even when we got too tired to run!  The high school FFA float was on the way to the cub scouts and a few of my students encouraged me to hop on their float.  Trying not to sound too out of breath I told them we had to find the cub scouts. I figure that we walked/ran about a mile and a half until we found the cub scouts. 

Griffin, on the float, relieved that we'd made it!

I think we said "Merry Christmas" hundreds of times to those watching the parade!

The parade was fun!  As we went by, Griffin and I waved to Vaughn and Faith who watched the parade from our apartment.  Cruising down Central, I started to get ideas of how our church could have a float next year.  I mentioned it to Pastor Stewart later in the community center, (which was the end of the parade route) and he gave me a rather exhausted look until I said it could be my project.  Stewart was in charge of A LOT of the Christmas Festival so it was a good thing that Vaughn preached both services on the 16th!

I tried to take a picture of all of us on the "float" and those up ahead.  It didn't really work to well.

Baking for the Pastors' Reception

Many years ago Pastor Stewart started a tradition of wishing the congregation a Merry Christmas by hosting a reception between the two services the first Sunday of December.  This year Vaughn and I joined in which meant doing a lot of baking! 

Counting  how many Heath Bar Cookies I've made

Klaus ended up getting sprinkled with flour and powdered sugar

Even his nose

Here's the spread.  Stewart made at least a dozen different types of cookies! 
Vaughn's "Vaughn bons" and my Russian Tea Cakes grace the table on the right.
It was a festive time.  I even got to bring home a few of my Snickerdoodles.