Any excuse for a party

Even at 8:00 a.m. Here is a group of us surprising our pastor who LOVES Starbucks (and if you read LN's blog, you will realize that Wooster has just gotten this coffeeshop). Julie and Jon planned this...lured him and his wife in...and about 10 of us surprised them.



Two parties in one day, right? Here is Karen getting ready for the evening's dessert with two young families from church (total, six and 1/3 kids) and said pastor and wife. Usually I lose my sanctification doing cutout cookies, but today went very well. K received the cutters from her GFH Christmas gift-name-draw. Nothing like semi-homemade to make things reasonable. And if you look closely, you'll see what Santa brought early to my kitchen. I had to get out the manual to figure out how to bake the cookies:)

An Advent Evening

Teaching an old dog...

...new tricks.

I am working in the Taylor Hall computer room, burning CDs. "What?" you say, "you know how to do such a thing?" Well, only with help. (And I now know why it is called "burn"--these come from the machine hot to the touch!) We have several well-loved children's tapes that are no longer available in any format, but a couple of them are of such a quality (yes, the old is not necessarily to be scorned) that I want to preserve them for a younger generation. The college has equipment that can transfer audio tapes to wav files and from there to CDs. It took over two hours (and a couple of glitches) this morning to turn "Here We Come, Rejoicing" and "The Great, Late Potentate" to the files and generate a testable CD. When it worked, I went to lunch and came back renewed to make nine more CDs. The staff here assures me that if I am not legal (I tried to find used copies, etc...all to no avail), they are not the CD police. In the midst of the various comings and goings of the next few days (Ellen arrives home today and Karen Sunday), I will package up CDs for all the families of our great nephews and nieces, hoping that they too will find this Christian music for children as nourishing (edifying seems a bit odd a word to use) as we have over the years.

Gettin' Ready

I was going to blog about the phenomenon of Christmas cantatas in the evangelical world since we just finished performing one of the less cheesy ones we have sung in during the last many years. We have a cracker-jack little spitfire of a college music performance major senior (on tippy-toe she can't be more than 4-10) who can really get music out of this mottly choir which has never had a director with musical training (which isn't to say that our previous directors have not had musical ability). She invited a year-long exchange student from Holland to accompany us (both of them are part of the enthusiastic student contingent who add so much to our church). He has professional training but no experience as an accompanist. He stands a good 6-3 or so, so when they together received their accolades, they made a cute pair! Anyhow, it went as well as can be expected, given that part of the purpose of a church choir is to welcome in any and all who want to serve and we have an ancient man who used to direct the choir at the high school in his long-ago heyday who is nearly deaf....:) The people loved it, especially the Amy Grant "Breath of Heaven" solo by the mother of the Halloween kitty who visits our house each week.
All that to say, I'm not going to blog about cantatas (are they valuable? is their cheesiness too much of a negative? etc). I am going to say that Chuck surprised me this morning by annoucing that we were going to go out and buy the rest of the new appliances we need to update our kitchen. We did and they might be in place by Christmas--or they might not. We're that much closer to being able to sell the house and retire to climates north of here.

Frantic Final Week

No, that's not frantic finals week--that's next week. The last week of classes is usually worse for me (I'll let Chuck judge for himself). Not only is the Writing Center schedule crammed and paperwriters cranky, but I do a disproportionate amount of entertaining this week as well. I have my FYS for a homemade and (according to them) yummy breakfast the last day of our class and then turn around and have the annual WCF carolling party the next night. That's a lot of cooking and baking to do from Wed. night through Friday afternoon. But all went well with both parties. My southern students were excited to see snow (though only a bare dusting compared to what Karen and dad et. al. have had in MI) but the carollers would probably have preferred the warmer temps that make snow than the bitter wind chill. Chuck built our annual fire in the fireplace....After hot chocolate or hot cider and goodies, our favorite Wooster IV staff member--these days, that would be Annie--had us all--all but the Set players--making oragami-style Moravian star ornaments (Japan meets Germay??) before the bulk of students went off to another party or to see "The Nativity." Now if only she had Christmas colored strips of paper rather than the neon ones I practiced on, we could add some ornaments to the yet-unpurchased tree.

Today brought a Writing Center openhouse at my boss's, a trip to put in an appearance at the Bible quiz tournament at church and tonight a return trip to church to rehearse the Christmas Cantata. Tomorrow will be the Cantata, a TLC (small group) potluck at our house, and the children's Christmas program. Then we can begin grading and finals....