CHRISTMAS RUN DOWN
As far as we can tell no one in our household has to exchange a single present! Success!

Because you asked, I got a bunch of cool stuff -- sweaters, shirt, book, dinner cards, sweets, Sees... I even got the one thing I asked for -- a Madagascar DVD -- more than I need or deserve. The most innovative surprise was a set of LCD flashlights my brother sent. No batteries -- but you wind them up for 60 seconds to provide 45 minutes of light. Very useful.

We didn't know what to expect for worship this morning. After one of our larger Christmas Eve crowds last night I thought we'd be way down today. But we were just a little shy of average. And it was good. We had communion, a spontaneous kid's drama, and Dan preached since I "preached" last night.

This afternoon we picked up Jessie Carlson from Covenant Village and traveled to the Sacramento area for Christmas dinner with family. It was Jessie's 94th Christmas!

Driving through the rain tonight made me thankful that the tire on the van was low yesterday morning. I didn't figure out what the problem was but as I was examining the tire I saw that the belts were slipping and the tire was getting ready to shred. So I was able to get down to America's Tire Store -- which just opened two days earlier -- and bought a couple of tires before they closed early for Christmas Eve. The low tire probably kept us from being stuck along the highway with a flat in the rain on Christmas -- or worse. So, I'm thankful for a leaking front tire. That was actually a good present.