Early Christmas Celebrations

 Thursday evening was our small group year end finale. We take off December and will restart in January - a nod to how busy people get for Christmas season. Of course, we ate out :)  Once we were all stuffed and more or less talked out, we played a game. It was a simple find the hidden books of the Bible in a paragraph, but it proved to be a challenge - 15 minutes in and no one found all 16 books! 

Our family had split up between the two tables, which ended up being an oops as we won both tables' prizes, having found 15/16 book names each!

 Everyone laughed it off, saying it wasn't fair to compete against professionals, and we shared the KitKat prizes as there was enough for everyone. 

Sunday was another day of celebration!  Grace and Aiden joined the special flagging team for the Joy week of Advent...

 ...and directly after, we joined the SIL group for their Christmas celebration. 

Again, lots of great food, chances to talk to those we don't get to interact with a lot, games, caroling, and presents.

The girls and Dad were delighted to have new audiences for their topics of novel writing and PhD writing. It's not easy to find people ready and willing to exchange in-depth conversation on those topics :)

Christmas joy!