My Christmas Eve

Three years ago a friend of mine (David) met a lady in a bookstore and somehow they started a conversation about Christmas caroling. This woman's neighbor was terminally ill and her daughter was trying to find a group of carolers to come carol to them for what was likely to be her last Christmas.

David sent out an email to a few friends letting us know about this opportunity. Since we are always home at Christmas and Brad always works Christmas Eve, David and I were able to carol to her home. I sent out an email to my friends and at 6pm on Christmas Eve - about 8 of us went to this woman's home, sang and visited for about 20 minutes, then left.

We all realized that this was one of the greatest things we could have done on this Christmas Eve.

So a tradition was started.

Since then we've Christmas caroled to a couple local nursing homes. It's a huge blessing to do this and I plan to do this every year. The people at the nursing home and the staff are always so excited to see us.

We are not a professional group - we actually kind of stink (well with the exception of Lyn, she CAN actually sing)....but it's not about that. It's about spreading some Christmas joy to some people who may not get many visitors. So next year, if you get an invite from me on facebook or via email - please don't let your excuse for not going be "they don't want to hear me sing". You need to find a better excuse than that. If you join us, I promise it's something you'll be glad you did.

This year we had 21 friends join in on the caroling. Emily took the lead on the guitar and played for us.

We sang in the dining hall and walked into most of the rooms to sing too.

We even sang in the elevator - to ourselves.

I was kidding about the singing to ourselves in the elevator.

I cried last year a lot (one woman grabbed my neck and called me her daughter's name and said she was so glad I came to see her - this about put me into a tail spin). So that I wouldn't do that this year Laura told me that if you think about math (yeah, I know sounds ridiculous) - like add 4+4 in your head it turns off the emotional part of your brain - so you won't cry. And it totally works. For real. Try it out some time.

David adores Laura and wouldn't leave her alone.

What made this day even better is that Brad's dad is in town and he went with us. Afterwards we grabbed a quick lunch, went to a couple stores and then came home. While David napped he helped me prepare some dishes for tomorrow's lunch. Brad just got home and now we are enjoying the fire and watching some TV.

This has been THE perfect Christmas Eve.

Merry Christmas.