What an amazing night last night! We had about 20 neighborhood women come to my house last night for the "Christmas Gathering", where one of our friends' friend gave a little devotional thought. This was an outreach to the friends and neighbors that came. There was a great time of treats, getting caught up with everyone since we're not able to do that as much during the winter, and sharing of traditions (which you know I was way into based on my last entry!). Then Maureen spoke, prayed an invitational prayer, and at the end we passed out notecards and asked everyone to write their thoughts about the evening as well as indicate if they had prayed the prayer and if they were interested in a basic Bible study. There were NINE people that said that they prayed with Maureen! And there were a couple more that were interested in the Bible study! A huge thank you to those of you that were praying for this event - there was definitely spiritual warfare going on, but we know that God had His hand on the whole evening, and hopefully the things that we know were successes are just the beginning of what He has planned for this neighborhood.

Currently Reading A Designer's Eye for Scrapbooking By Ali Edwards see related A lot has happened in the past couple of weeks: We went to a really fun holiday sweater party for the second year in a row. Played a fun game that I think was called hammer-schlager? Carter has progressed from just rolling to doing the worm. It's funny, and he's becoming fast. Especially when he sees the Christmas tree with lights on. Crawling is just around the corner... Work has been crazy. Blech. I went on an amazing girls weekend with Deby and Andrea last week. Managed to get some scrapbooking done, but not as important as just hanging out - I love these girls. First time away from Carter and we all survived. Even Jamie, with Carter having had his flu shot booster before I left. And now Carter goes down way better at night. Bonus. Participated in Northbrook's Luciafest - I sang a solo, and Carter was a tomte. Made krumkake last night - yummy! I'm hosting a neighborhood "Christmas Gathering" tomorrow night with the women in my neighborhood Bible study - it's an outreach sort of thing. Please pray for those that are coming if you think of it - that they would be receptive to the message that is going to be shared. I don't have anything planned during the day on Saturday - I'm SO excited. What is your favorite Christmas tradition? I'm trying to implement new ones this year - like new pajamas for everyone on Christmas Eve. I'd love to get some more ideas!