Merry Merry Merry Christmas!!!!

I only say that three times because I am a few days late.

Christmas has been so awesome here at the Witcher household. We spent a very laid back yet festive last few days.

Saturday night before Christmas we attended the first Saturday night service of a new Church we have started going to. It is called Journey Church, and Ken and the pastor have built a great relationship over the past couple of years while we have been raising support. It is a new church plant in Raleigh, NC, is about two years old, and has about 500 who attend two Sunday services every week. It is closer to where we live than our old church, and we have many more opportunities to serve while we are in the Raleigh area. Anyway, it was an awesome service with amazing rockin' worship and a powerful message. There were so many salvations and it was just overwhelming to be there.

The night before Christmas Eve we went Caroling with some very good friends. They invite us every year because... well they just love us and we love their family... but they also say they invite us because they can't sing very well, and they make me lead all the songs. I don't get to do that very much because I live in a family of singers and music leaders, but I really enjoy leading others in worship. We then go back to their house for lots of food and fellowship. We love that part.

Ken and I then get up Christmas Eve, like we do almost every year and shop. We say we have everything bought, but we always find an excuse to get out. We love the holiday atmosphere at the mall and other places. It was so fun because we did not run around frantic, we just leisurely shopped and watched the other frantic people while drinking Starbucks of course. It is one our favorite times of Christmas.

We then spent Christmas Eve with a good friend of mine who has 5 kids; 4 of them exactly the same ages of my 4. It was so much fun watching all the kids play, meeting some new people (I love meeting new people!), watching The Polar Express, and just being in an atmosphere of people who you connect with.

We then went home, put the kids to bed, and stayed up until 2am cleaning, preparing white chili in a crockpot (so I would not have to cook a single thing on Christmas... just enjoy my kids) and of course wrapped all of our presents, and helped Santa put out all his gifts. :-) The most awesome thing was that we did not spend that much money on our kids this year. They got two small gifts, some stocking stuffers, and they had no idea that we didn't have much money to spend. They played with everything they got all day for the next three days and actually weren't overwhelmed with too many things. It was just an amazing Christmas all around.

I almost forgot to tell of the two friends of ours who got our kids presents. God has been so awesome and has shown up in so many ways and blessed us more than we could imagine. We are so excited to see what God has in store for us this next year.