My Christmas Eve Tale

I went to work Thursday, figuring I was going to be able to take off early as I was the only one in the office. When noon rolled around, I headed to the SW side of Madison. There is a supermarket there, my bank has a branch there, and a part for my snowblower was over there.

I went to Copps supermarket first to get my folks their Christmas present.

My folks are 72 and 68, they have a beautiful home they have lived in for almost 40 years, and they have everything they really want so we try not to burden them with trinket type gifts. I buy them dinner. Dinner that they would never buy for themselves. This year I scored a small 2.4 lb boneless rib roast, asparagus, shitake mushrooms, yukon gold potatoes, and red an jou pears. At the same time I picked up some jasmine rice (can't get it at our local small town Piggly Wiggly) and a bottle of Makers.

When I got home, the SoDT asked how much I spent on my folks. (She likes to try to keep everything "equal" when giving gifts.)

I told her I didn't know, because some of it was for us.

Question: What do you all think I meant when I said that?

SHE thought I meant that some of the rib roast was for us for supper, which it wasn't.

Fast forward to Christmas Eve day. I took the boys to my mom and dads to hang out for the day (my dad just had a hip replaced) and to give my wife time alone to finish wrapping presents.

We went to town and picked up some of the weekly specials for her, and got home around 4:30.

Around 5:00 she's panicking because I didn't have time to cook the rib roast (which she assumed we were having for Christmas Eve) before we left for church, and there was no time to get anything else ready (after I told her the rib roast was not for us) before we left. Much to her credit (and way outside of her norm) she said "We'll go to church, when we're done we'll drive into town and grab something at Piggly Wiggly. If they're closed we'll hit SubWay, and if they're closed we'll hit KwikTrip (Wisconsin's version of a 7-Eleven).

Just so you know, we go to a great church, and we all love one another like there is no tomorrow. Getting away from church can be difficult because we fellowship really, really well.

Guess where we had Christmas Eve dinner?

At KwikTrip, of course!

We got it all to go, went home, sat around the the living room and thoroughly enjoyed our meal as a family.

I'm sure my wife and I will laugh about this little misunderstanding for many many Christmases.

I hope each of you made a special family memory this year too.

Christmas

I had a great Sunday school class last week.

Only two kids were in my class, a brother and sister. We did a short study on Luke chapter 2. What a great time together with a couple of young kids eager to learn about Jesus.

The first item we tackled together was the question "Was Jesus really born on December 25th?" The answer is probably not. But does His D.O.B. matter? No it doesn't. What matters is that He was born, and that we celebrate His birth.

You see, if Jesus the Son of The Most High God had never been born, He could never have died.

If Jesus had never died, we would still be under the Law.

If we were still under the Law, we could never be saved.

If we could never be saved, we could never spend eternity with Him.

What a great thing that He was born!

Take an hour out of you heavily commercialized Christmas and worship Him! Give praise to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob! Lift your hands in surrender to the Author and Finisher of our Faith! Jesus is God, come to save us from sin! PRAISE BE TO GOD!

It is my earnest prayer that if you have visited this blog, that you will take the time to invesigate who Jesus is, and what He did for you.

He saved a wretched vile man like me. He can save you too. He wants to. He is waiting for you to cry out to Him. Call on Him, and be saved!

God bless you all, and a very Merry Christmas to you, each and every one.

Edit:

I just realized I have not posted about this.

My dad had hip replacement surgery just over a week ago. He is doing very well, and I am so happy.

You see, my dad is an incredibly active 72 yo man and is always on the go. To see him in so much pain and unable to move around was very hard. He is using a walker for now, but I would suspect in a few days he'll be walking as normal. He is a wonderful man, and I love him more than he knows.

Hats

I love hats.

I wear them all of the time.

There are hundreds of hats around my house; some in boxes in the basement that have never been worn, in a hat storage unit for the ones I wear a lot, some sitting on top of a cabinet in my closet that I wear now and then.

Recently I ordered some more. Not just any hats though. Custom hats. With my BBQ team logo. Seven of them to be exact. In very cool colors.

I gave one to my oldest boy (in washed yellow) and I'll be sending one to my teammate soon. I am waiting for 4 more hats to come in before I mail them off.

Let me tell you, these hats rock!

The entire order process took place over the internet. I sent the company a bitmap file of my logo via their website. I placed an order using that logo as the one I wanted embroidered. They converted my file into an embroiderable design, sent it to me for approval, and then allowed me to customize the colors based on the color of the garment it was being embroidered on. All I changed was the color of the lettering to best contrast with logo and hat color. All in all a very painless process.

I could not believe how nice they looked when I got them. Years ago I had hats made, and the quality of these hats far exceeds the quality of my original purchase, and the price was way, way better. This is the company that did them. If you are in the market for custom embroidered apparel, check them out.

The quality was so good, I ordered some more stuff for the family for Christmas.

So far, it has been the lone high point of my winter.

AAAAAHHHHH

I am so close to losing my God damn mind!!!