Temple With Friends

 Ahhhh, good to be home.

Good to start my mornings in the sunroom praying, reading scriptures, 

and pondering passages in a wonderful book by Terryl and Fiona Givens,

All Things New: Rethinking Sin, Salvation and Everything In Between.

Good to be in my home gym moving and stretching with my Barre workout.

Good to be in the temple with my friends.

I'm making a commitment this holiday season to better balance

helping others with things I want to do to celebrate Christmas.

Like parties and time with friends!

Last year I only had a couple of Christmas parties, and I missed the one I was most looking forward to when I was needed to help someone in need.

It's not so much that I missed the party, but that I didn't have any other gatherings to look forward to.

Hence, the impetus to host a big party with friends.

I'm also on the planning committee for the RS Christmas dinner.

(Not sure why they didn't have it last year, but I missed it.

This ward's tradition is to have it at someone's home and I LOVE the intimate setting 

rather than having it at the church.)

Dan and I are making holiday plans and I've also tried to say "yes" to as many events as possible.

Starting with doing Initiatory at the temple with friends and lunch afterward.

All five of us (Andrea not pictured) sat on a couch in the waiting room together 

and we got lots of smiles from the older ladies also waiting. 

I used to prefer going to the temple alone--

desperate for inspiration and crying over teenagers, basically.

(I know, I know, they're such good kids! What could I possibly have to worry about?)

But going with friends had me looking forward to today all week.

(By the way, one family name I did was from the 1700's Holy Roman Empire!)

Lunch afterward at Greek City Grill

then home to start decorating for Christmas!

I didn't get as far as I wanted to, and the garland is still where it crashed down,

I'm just carefully walking with a wide berth whenever

I pass through the dining room so I don't step on any glass. 

I was going to make a healthy dinner tonight,

but Chris came home and hoped we could get Cafe Rio.

So we did.