And here is the crowd WITH the train. Take special note of Sam and his bottle of water or soda or whatever it was. I don't know what was up with him, but he was sure to display it proudly in every picture taken throughout the evening! Ha!

Some giant poinsettias...

The Nativity... and just about the only display our party didn't invade!

The gingerbread house...

Sam & Tammy breaking into (or out of?) the gingerbread house...

Joe and a gingerbread boy...

Katie and a gingerbread girl...

After we had walked through the whole park--and listened to Sara complain about having to walk it instead of sitting in a nice, cushy seat in a heated automoble and driving through it (can you imagine?! What a notion!!!)--we decided to hoof it across the park to where they had this GIANT Christmas tree. Actually, it's not a tree, but it looks like one from a distance! Tammy and I decided Sara NEEDED to go the extra miile and perhaps the Christmas cheer of it all would seep through and she'd start to be a little more festive. Didn't work, but we had a great time anyway! :-)

Here's the crowd (see all those little shadows?!) in front of it...

And here they are again...

An interesting view of the Grinchly one--you can see all the way to the star at the top of the tree! Cool, hu?!

The first picture taken of James and me together since our wedding. (Ha! Not quite, but probably not too far off!)

And, of course, a picture of me with the dear friend that God has blessed me to be able to live near for two whole years once again (we never would have expected that!) and who I'm going to miss sooooooooo desperately when we move to New Mexico... :-(

We left the park and headed back to Andrews. Got the kids down at regular bedtime, which was great! James and I were sooooo tired, but we had invited the crowd over to play games. I almost called to cancel, but I'm so glad I didn't! It was so much fun!!! We played two games of Balderdash and we just laughed and laughed--what a fantastic game! I stink at it, but you don't have to be good to enjoy it. :-) And--GET THIS--I actually WON the first game! And TAMMY won the second one! Whoa!!! It was great fun. In fact, Tammy told me to post one of the cards we played...

Movie Title: Adventures of El Frenetico & Go Girl

For those not familiar with the game, everybody has to write their own definition for the word (or in this case, their own plot for this movie--it's a real movie), then you read through all of the selections and everybody tries to pick which is the REAL definition, or right answer. Tammy said to just post the title and let everybody leave a comment and try to come up with a good plot. We'll see if we get any response. I'll post the real plot next time. :-)

Anyway, it was a truly great day. Great church, great fun, great fellowship. What could be better?!

We finally got to bed at about midnight. At about 3:30am our bedroom door came FLYING open simultaneously with the most bloodcurdling scream I'd ever heard in my life, and a small child landing on top of me. It was Joe and he was in absolute hysterics. He's been scared before (he's the most skiddish of our three), but NEVER like this. The commotion, of course, woke up Sam and he appeared in our doorway seconds later, wrapped in his blanket, great big eyes staring into the darkness trying to figure out what was going on.

Before I continue, let me explain that we had let the kids watch Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol a couple of days ago. I was on the phone at the time and unable to really "monitor" the show like I otherwise would have. We're pretty particular about what the kids watch and have a rule of never letting them watch anything that we haven't previewed and approved ahead of time. Somehow we broke our rule this time--and we are now very sorry that we did! Ha! The cartoon "ghost" of Jacob Marley didn't seem too scary...to an adult. But apparently it was a little more than Joe could handle. When I finally got him calmed down enough to speak (which took some doing, believe me!) he explained that he had been lying in bed thinking of "that blue ghost" and he was getting more and more scared. So he decided to come to our room and tell us he was scared. But when he touched the doorknob, "it sounded like the ghost's chains!!!" That's when he lost it. He was already scared of the "ghost with chains" and was headed for Mom & Dad, but when he heard the chains he simply lost all control and slung the door open, screaming bloody murder and was on top of me in no time flat. Oh yeah--Hershey had heard Joe get up and just as Joe was reaching for the doorknob Hersh was coming down the hallway to investigate. So not only did Joe hear the doorknob, but he heard the "chain" on Hershey's collar which was coming down the hallway straight for him! Ha! Ha! Ha! Too much!!! I laughed, but only a little. It was truly funny (even at 3:30 in the morning!), but I recall all too well what it's like to be a kid in the dark with an over-active imagination. It is very, very real to a kid and it is very, very scary!

So I took Joe back to his room and talked with him and prayed with him for 10 or 15 minutes. I shared some Bible verses with him about fear and how it's not of God and how God doesn't want us to be afraid--and that we don't need to be afraid. When I made the statement that "there's nothing to be afraid of," Joe cut in and very adamantly voiced his opinion to the contrary. "You're wrong, Mom--there are a lot of things to be afraid of!!!" Then he started listing them off one by one! HA! They were all crazy things, of course, such as the afore mentioned "ghost." In fact, nothing he listed was even REAL. But to a five year old... !!! ~sigh~ I knew I was in for a long night. I try to be real careful to not baby the kids (the last thing I want are a bunch of sissies!), but sometimes it's just so hard to know what to do! Joe was genuinely scared out of his senses and I knew if I just put him back in bed and left that that imagination of his was going to be cranking out all sorts of "scary" things. So I got my pillow and laid down on the floor in the boys' room for a little while. I was thinking that I'd lay there a few minutes so he wouldn't be scared, he'd drop off to sleep, and then I could go back to my own bed. HA. I wish!!! About 40 minutes later I sat up to look at him and he was STILL wide awake! But he was nice and calm and rational, at last, and was fine with me going back to bed. ~whew~ I was sooooooo tired!

The only trouble now was that SAM was still wide awake, too! So for the next hour or so he had issues of his own. He was had to go to the bathroom ("then GO, for goodness' sake!"), he was thirsty ("Too bad--you can wait 'til morning!"), and so on. The last time was at about 5:45, I think. He appeared by my bed, wrapped in his blanket, grinning and saying, "Mom, I scared." I took one sleepy-eyed look at him and said, "YOU ARE NOT." "Yes, I am!" I gave him the look of death and told him to get back to his bed this instant, or else. ~sigh~ FINALLY got back to sleep at about 6:00. What a night!!! I think I stayed in bed until a little after 9:00 to try to make up for it. It didn't, but I had to try!

Just after I got up we got a phone call from the realtor. House showing at 10:30. ~SIGH~ I am soooooooo tired of this! When is my house going to be just MINE and I can stop having to get it all cleaned up for strangers that I never see and load my familiy up and GET OUT?! We got everything all straightened up again, beds made and whatnot, and headed out for brunch, of necessity.

Came home and spent all afternoon on the phone with the realtors. I will spare you the long, drawn-out story simply because I'm sick of telling it! Ha! It's been CRAZY and I'll never understand why all the jokes are about lawyers--realtors are AT LEAST as bad, if not worse. GOOD GRIEF. But in spite of their "failures," shall we say, I have news!!! This is where that ~Aaaaaaauuuugggghhhh!~ title comes in...

I said that we got an offer on the house on Friday. It was quite a bit lower than what we were asking. We prayed and felt like we needed to come down just a bit from our asking price ($4,900 less, rather than the $14,900 less the people had offered us.) They heard our offer and counter offered again. We prayed and just felt like we needed to stay right where we were. We got the call this evening that they are going to TAKE the price we gave them! So, in a very unofficial way, it looks like...

Our House is SOLD!!!

Whoa!!! Praise the Lord!!! And, of course, ~Aaaaaauuuuuggggghhhhh!!!~ NOW what do I do?! Ha! In all honesty, I have felt perfectly calm through this entire process (except for some definite frustation with dopey realtors) and have been pretty numb to any emotions in any of it. But I know that I SHOULD be feeling ~Aaaaaaauuuuuggggghhhh!~ Right?! I mean, this is CRAZY. I leave day after tomorrow for Albuquerque (we'll be gone for 6 full days), then I'll come home and try to get this house packed up and cleaned up and moved out of before January 1st, when these folks want to close on this house. No biggie, really, if there was no such thing as CHRISTMAS! I really think we're going to have to abondon the whole holiday this year. We know the TRUE meaning of Christmas and naturally that's the most important thing. But I think we're going to end up cutting out a lot of the extra "frills" of it this year! We're just not going to have TIME to do much celebrating, you know?! So much for the Christmas bake sale and the Christmas ABM party that was supposed to be here and the fun game nights with Sam & Tammy with Christmas music and punch and cookies and gingerbread... It's just such a terrible time to think of moving, you know?! But I have to believe that God has His reasons for working all of this out at this particular time, so I have to believe that it's all going to work out okay. We had hopes of going back east for Christmas to spend some time with James folks and mine, but that's looking very unlikely. Unless, of course, God perfoms some mighty big miracles and let's the packing of this house take place in record time! Ha! I guess we'll see. I'm really not worried about any of it right now. All we can do is take it a day at a time and do our very best. And for now, there's nothing I can do but pray because we're leaving for Albuquerque Wednesday morning! So I'm going to concentrate on having a really great Revival there this week, and THEN I'll start trying to figure the rest out when we get back home!

So there you have it. A great big, juicy post with lots of great pictures and Christmas lights, a terrific story about my scaredy-cat son AND great news about the (impending) sale of our house and the chaos that will now ensue. :-) We'll be signing the papers in the morning, then there will be 10 days for inspections and such (during which the potential buyers have the option to back out), then we're supposed to close sometime before the end of the month. CRAZY. Keep us in your prayers! Pray that God will work it all out smoothly and according to His will, and pray (most of all!) that He will keep our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus--that we'll be able to work through all of this with peace and joy in our hearts and our home instead of stress and anxiety. So far, so good! Ha! And pray for God to lead us to the right house in Albuquerque. We'll be looking for it while we're there this week, so pray that God will open the doors for us and help us to find what He wants. Ah yes, Albuquerque...!

We'll be in Revival there beginning on Wednesday night and continuing through Sunday night. Brother Dustin Hays will be our evangelist and we are sooooo excited! James talked to one of the guys from the Albuquerque church tonight and he said he's been inviting everybody he knows to the Revival. :-) We are trusting God to do great things this week and beyond and we'd really appreciate your prayers. I'm sure Brother Dustin would, too. :-) The only BAD thing about this is that we won't be able to keep the Hays in our home since we don't have one there yet! We're shooting for adjoining motel rooms, but it's just not the same thing, you know?! So I'm feeling a little cheated that I can't truly "have company" during this Revival, but I guess I'll settle for "next door neighbors" since that's as close as I can get! ANYWAY...

This is wa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ay too long and I really need to get some sleep. We had a good prayer with Joe before bedtime (and I heard him praying very hard!) and he went down with no problem. I'm trusting that he'll sleep straight throught the night with no problems. I need the sleep, even if he doesn't! Ha! Anyway, I wanted to be sure to blog all the latest since I'm not sure when I'll get a chance again. Maybe tomorrow, maybe not. I'm sure I'll blog sometime during the Revival--you just never know 'til you get there! Anyway, now you're all up to date on the latest from around here. It'll last a little while, I hope. :-)

G'night!!!

~Bec~

Ah yes, a couple of pictures from last week...

Here is Pastor Sam on the day before his big 4-1 day!

And acting as every 41 year old should...

And the Christmas stuff on the top of my piano--don'tcha' love the train?! :-)


And forget it--after this ridiculously long post nobody is going to remember to submit their answers for our online Balderdash (!), so I'll just give you the real answer now!

Movie Title: Adventures of El Frenetico & Go Girl

Plot: A Zorro-type guy and his karate-kicking girlfriend fight a junk food mogul whose snacks turn people into zombies.

HA! HA! HA! Is that great, or what?! Who comes up with this stuff?! One thing is for sure--JOE sure won't be watching it if it has zombies!!! Ha! Later, y'all!