Willow Creek Christmas :)

:) Lauren and Wolfgang, I finally got this post up!
Especially because I know you were probably wondering what kind

of people we took to your house while you were gone, I made sure to take

quite a few "people" pictures. So here we are in the parking lot waiting for

all the other people from 'the caravan' to get out of their vehicles.

Me, Michael M., Crystal, and Stevie M.

Crystal and Alex!Alex and Me sort of "camera-warring".

The pretty auditorium? I'm not really sure what you call it...

It was all decorated and had light bulbs hanging everywhere! They looked

like stars when the main lights were turned down.

Singing Christmas carols.

:) Kinda like a mini-concert.

Willow Creek has VERY talented musicians!

And actors for that matter!

They put on a very wonderful production that I quite enjoyed.

This was all the pictures that I got of the stage though (sorry!)

Some of the Waasdorps :) The sat two rows behind

the rest of us. They ordered their tickets a day after the rest of us did,

but thankfully we still got to be relatively close to each other!

The rest of the Waasdorps! And Rachel... :)
And half of our row. We took up a whole row in one of the
sections! (I think that was 22 seats!)

Stevie, Michael and Me. We were being "cool". :)
That's why we wear our sunglasses inside!

Back at Lauren and Wolfgang's house (which they ever so kindly let us

'borrow' even though they are not there!!!) we feasted! And I do mean

that literally. There was food set out everywhere!

Wolfgang, do you notice in the bottom right-hand corner of this photo

that we had colored peppers in your honor??

Mary-Sue, who was a wonderful hostess stand in for Lauren (but we

reallyreallyreallyreally missed Lauren!!! :*( Boohooo!) Had put on

"White Christmas" to add to the ambiance or something like that...

Guess what, we are definitely having a white Christmas this year!
We got 3 or 4 in. of snow last night, and the weather channel says we are going

to get hit with another strain of snow Thursday or Friday.

I guess that's fine though. Then maybe Winter will get the snow out of its

system and we'll be ready for Spring, say, come Sunday?? :D

I came into the room later to find Mary-Sue and her daughter

singing the "Sisters" song :D And couldn't help but take a picture!

More food (yumyum!) Even MORE food! (see, I told you we feasted!)

And COOKIES!!!!

We had a wonderful fellowship time with everyone there, but it was

sad not having L&W with us. We really felt like part of 'us' was missing for

the whole evening. Oh yeah... It was :(

Rach and I trying to be cool... Sigh, we fail awfully at looking 'cool'...

Lauren! You'll be happy to know that there were a few Christmas decorations up!

And uh, maybe its a good thing that 'dancing santa' wasn't in the bathroom...

It might have given one of the 'newbies' a heart attack :P

Our shoes. Not quite as chaotic as in years past... Maybe

we are all improving on our organizational skills?? The... More 'mature' crowd monopolized the red couch and watched White Christmas.

Muh ahahahaha! And pretty much left the rest of the house to the rest of us!

Don't worry, don't worry, we behaved and didn't destroy anything!

And some clean-up. Leave it to a Mom to realize that the bread should be

put away as soon as everyone was done eating so that they wouldn't

have a whole bunch of giant croutons later...

Then after White Christmas was over, Crystal (with a little help) figured

out how to work the speakers on W's computer so that we could watch the

messages that L, W, M, and R had sent us!
We loved them! Especially the singing! :D And last but not least, a group picture!!

ThankyouThankyouThankyou Lauren and Wolfgang for lending us your

house! I'm sure it wasn't the easiest thing in the world to let a bunch of

strangers traipse through your house without being home, but it added

so much to our night, and we so enjoyed ourselves!

THANK YOU!!!!