This Life Stage and It's Christmas!

I'm beginning this new blog at a time of complete change for our family. We recently changed churches after 5 years at a church we loved and devoted ourselves to. I was on the staff the last 1 1/2 years of our time there. No need for details, but after J and I ignored God's gentle prompting that it was time to move on, God grabbed us and shook us until He had our complete attention, at which point obedience set in and we changed churches. We went from a smaller church, about 250 people to a large church, about 4500 people. The most obvious findings so far is that the bigger the church, the more programs they are able to provide. With that comes an unbelievable children's program. Rather than 4-6 children in each grade, there are about 20-30 kids per grade each service! Why would we like this over the smaller classroom size you might be thinking? Well, our girls are shy and making friends is not easy. There are now many different personalities in each grade, which makes it much more likely that the girls will find friends similar to them. This is a huge bonus for K, who had absolutely nothing in common with the 4 other kids in her age group at the previous church. I'm sure I'll be writing a lot more about this transition into a new church community very soon.

Christmas is just a few days away and I'm doing what I normally DON'T do, procrastinating. All my shopping is done (even if I finished it later than usual), but now not a single gift is wrapped! Usually by now, everything is ready and I'm just counting down the hours until our first family gathering. Since it's currently 3:30 in the morning and I can't sleep, I imagine I'll roll out of bed sometime around 9:30 in the morning tomorrow/today and start a day of serious present wrapping, with brief breaks to play Wii Fit with the girls (exercise is always good, especially during the holidays when junk food seems to be the snack of choice).