Cup of Good Cheer

Tonight I sat down and enjoyed a "Cup of Good Cheer," while listening to our children sing in our church's annual Christmas program.  It was perfectly wonderful, drinking in all the sweet goodness of these precious children singing Christmas songs.

I was super proud of thus cute kid.

He and a group of his friends did a great job singing one of the songs together.

They hit every note and did a wonderful job.  

Ellee and her sweet friends were also all rock stars tonight.

My goodness, I love these kids.

These sweet siblings also did a terrific job reading their special parts.

The program was fantastic.  All of the children did a great job singing songs and blessing our entire church with some Christmas goodness.

After the children finished their songs, we enjoyed a wonderful concert from the choir.

This beautiful woman and our dear Jan did an incredible job directing the children and the choir.  All of their hard work paid off and it was a very special night to treasure.

Afterwards, we enjoyed refreshments and hang out time with good friends.

It was fun and silly and the perfect way to end the night.  I'm not sure about you, but it's been a pretty emotionally rough weekend, considering all that's gone on.  I found myself bouncing back and forth between feelings of sorrow for other people's loss, and incredible gratitude for everything that I've been blessed with.  I would tear up throughout the day at the thought of those families that lost their little ones and I hugged our kids a lot this weekend.  All that being said, it was good to have something good to enjoy this evening.  It was good to be surrounded by the sweet voices of little ones.  It was good to know that even in the midst of a world, weary and sad, there were still things going on that were sweet and pure and good.  Many thoughts and prayers continue to be sent out for the families of Newtown.

Finally, more goodness came when we finished off our Sunday night hanging out with these cool kids. Many of our students are now home from college for the winter break, and we love them and it was so good to see them all for our College and Career Group.  We had a great time catching up and talking about the "Thrill of Hope" that we have at Christmas time, because Christ was born.  It was a fantastic way to finish off the weekend.