Tis the Season...well almost

I cannot believe how quickly the holidays are sneaking up on us!  I just finished getting all of our "lodging" booked.  We'll stay most of the time, Thanksgiving through New Year's Day at my parents' house, but we do have a long weekend in the Portland area and about a week in Eastern Washington, as well as one night on the Olympic peninsula.  Our trailer will celebrate Christmas in California without us!  We'll come back to it in February!

You can get our full ministry/concert schedule HERE, but I thought I'd give you an overview too.

"Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays..."

We'll make it back to my parents' house just in time to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family.  It will, no doubt, be a loud, chaotic celebration, as every gathering of my family is! :)  When we get together at my parents' house there will be at minimum (that is if no one invites friends or other family), our family of four, my mom and dad, 3 sisters, 1 brother, 1 brother-in-law, 2 sibling "significant other"s, 3 nieces, a nephew, and a partridge in a pear tree!  And let's just say, we are not a particularly quiet or peaceful bunch!  When we gather, the practice is to always have at least three different conversations going on at the same time, in the same room and if you can't hear yourself. . . just talk louder!

After Thanksgiving I will NOT be black Friday shopping, thank you very much!

Our first Christmas concerts are the weekend following Thanksgiving and they are on the Olympic Peninsula, so we'll take a ferry over there on Saturday.

The following weekend we will do several Christmas concerts in the Portland/Vancouver area, so if you're nearby, make sure you come say hello! :)

The second week of December, we'll be staying mostly closer to home.  We even get to serve at our home church by sharing music at Renton Bible Church during their "Celebrate Christmas" program and dessert!  Yay for friends, Christmas music, and cookies! :)

December 15-20, we'll be in the greater Spokane and Coeur d'Alene areas doing 6 concerts in 6 days!  Woohoo!  You can start praying now that there is no snow in the pass that weekend!

The week of Christmas we'll travel to the coast for a Christmas Eve eve concert and then the next day attend the annual Christmas Eve service at our home church!  

Christmas morning will be spent at my parents' house again, with another exciting family gathering!  My boys LOVE spending all day at Grammy and Papa's with the whole family!  They are already talking about it and have double checked to make sure that everyone will be there (one of my sisters was out of the country for Christmas last year and this was met with much disapproval by my boys! )

We will finish off our Christmas celebration by participating for the third year in a row at The Lights of Christmas at Warm Beach in Stanwood, WA.  Josh plays for a few hours at their Starry Night cafe and the boys and I walk around and enjoy the gorgeous light display and hot mini donuts! :) 

Well, there you have it!  That will conclude our crazy, busy Christmas schedule!  On January 2nd, Josh and I will celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary by heading across the mountains on our way to our new home!  I can think of no better way to start the new year, then to rejoice in God's abundant gift of our home!

NOW just for fun, and since you took the time to read through this whole post (you did, didn't you!?), my hubby is offering you a free download from his Christmas fingerstyle guitar CD, "O Holy Night". 

Just click on the picture of the CD to the right.  Then you will see near the top of that page, "Free Download".  You can  click on the link titled "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and you will immediately be given the option to save that file to your device/computer!  Enjoy! :)