Friends reunite

Today was awesome. First we went to our little church on the hill. It was full, which is something I haven't seen at our church since, well probably last Christmas. For some reason our church has started doing two Christmas programs, one the Sabbath before Christmas and one the Sabbath after. So for this week we weren't involved in the program and just got to sit and watch it. To be perfectly honest, I did a good bunch of people-watching through the almost two-hour program, especially since there were so many visitors and people I didn't recognize. Part of that people-watching was kid-watching. For years our church has been rather devoid of children, but recently we've been having more people with younger children come and it's fun to hear kid sounds and to watch them throughout the service again. One of Bryn's friends, Rachel, was sitting about halfway up the church holding her 14-month-old nephew. He's a really quiet, but very observant baby, so it's always fun to watch him when his parents are in town and come to our church. Anyway, after the service we talked to all the people we haven't seen since August and then went home for a wonderful haystack meal with my family and grandparents. After lunch my mum read more Christmas stories and then she took Bryn, Ty and I to the hospital to visit my great-aunt who got admitted on Wednesday because of asthama/breathing problems. She really, really doesn't want to be in the hospital and apparently kept telling my mum all during her and my grandma's visit yesterday that she just wanted to walk out of the hospital and leave. Today she was a lot calmer and was really happy to see us college students home again. We helped her eat supper and get her comfortable before leaving.

After that we stopped at one of my favourite stores, Art Knapp. It's a plant and florist store with a bunch of lawn and house decorations. That was a really bad description, but unless you go to an Art Knapp store, especially at Christmas time, you can't really understand what it's like. My mum wanted to show us a few things that we could get her for Christmas, but we ended up just wandering through the store looking at all the cool stuff they have. I must be getting old because every time I go into that store I see more and more things that I like. I'm starting to become my mother, ack! After that we went home for a few minutes and then were off again to Julie and Michael's house. We picked up another of Ty's friends, Mark, on the way there and then the them and Michael and another friend, AJ, went to the basement to watch movies. Julie and her parents and Bryn and I played a whole bunch of games and laugh, a lot. It was great to play games again. I didn't do too much of that this semester, but really want to do more of it this coming semester. After we were game-ed out, we found a couple Christmas movies on TV to watch and switched back and forth between them until we decided to watch the less weird one. We were about halfway done that movie when we heard the doorbell ring. Julie's dad went to answer it and as soon as I heard the person outside talk I knew, it was one of my high school classmates, Jonathon. He just got home from Loma Linda yesterday and their family was in town for the day. On Saturday nights here at home our school gym is open and anyone who wants to can go play floor hockey. Jonathon and Stephen and their other brother, Chris who goes to CUC (the Canadian one) were at the school playing hockey and then when they were done they came over to our house which is just around the corner from the school. When my parents said that we were up at Julie's house they came up there to see us. We abandoned the movie and talked with them for awhile. Later on Chris came over too and after more talking, when the boys were done their movies, we decided to make a Tim Horton's run before heading our separate ways. I rode with Jonathon and we had a really great talk, something we haven't had a chance to do for a long time, mostly because he's always in med. school and even during breaks we don't have that much time to see each other. Anyway we all got food and talked some more until finally Jonathon said he had to get to sleep and all the groups of siblings headed back to our respective dwellings. It was awesome to be able to spend so much time with friends we don't get to see all that often. If tonight is any indication, I think this break is going to be pretty great!