The weekend update and now since it's the middle of a new week an update on that as well.

It's Wednesday and I'm just now doing my weekend update.  It must be December!  :)

After swim practice on Friday, we had dinner and then Peter headed to the Varsity boys basketball game.  Dan and I also went because we enjoy going to the basketball games. Sarah wanted to stay home and relax so she was happy.

On Saturday morning we dropped Sarah off at school.  She was behind in her pottery class and the teacher opened up the art studio for anyone who needed to come in and get caught up on their work or anyone who just wanted to practice.  Sarah is enjoying this pottery class and she's coming home with some really cute items.

After her time at the pottery studio, she went to a friend's house for an ornament exchange.  Each girl brought an ornament and then they played take away for the ornaments.  They had snacks, played games and took a lot of pictures.  She had a great time!

On Sunday we attended Mass, had lunch at my mom's house and had this beauty for dessert:

I was supposed to use cranberries for the decoration but had to sub red M&M's instead.  I think it turned out pretty cute.  Although I will say, the chocolate log roll recipe that I used last year was tastier than this one so next time I do one of these I will go back to my old recipe.

Sarah had a birthday party to attend at a restaurant downtown on Sunday evening so after we dropped her off, Dan and I headed to Incendiary Brewery for a beer. We liked the place but did not like their beer.  We most likely won't be heading back there anytime soon!

And here's an awkward selfie we took... We really should stop taking these!  :) But I liked the artwork on the ceiling so...

The kids had the day off of school on Monday and I headed to Boone to pack shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child.  I went with my friends from my old MOPS Care Group and we had a blast.

After a short orientation video, we were paired up with another group of workers, met the staffer in charge of our assembly line and got to work.

The first person in line checks the boxes for shipping money and then moves the box down where two more people are waiting to remove all the items from the box and check for things that are not allowed:  liquids, food, weapons, military or war items, seeds, money, etc.  and then after removing any bad items we had to check to add items if the box seemed a little lacking.  Then it got moved to the taping person who put packing tape around the box lids to secure them. Then they got scanned (if the person affixed one of the tracking barcodes to see where the package is) and placed in a larger container based on the sex of the child and the age of the child.  Then once the large box was full (each large box held 16 shoeboxes) it was taped and taken to the shipping area.

It was a lot of fun - the ladies I was with make everything fun - but it was also a lot of work.  It was also a little mentally draining.  The contents in some of the boxes were very sparse or just plain odd.  We had to keep reminding ourselves that these boxes are prayed over multiple times through the process (in fact, at one point, everyone in the warehouse stopped and a prayer was said overall the boxes being processed during our shift) and that God will make sure the right box gets to the right child.  I  also believe that with some of these boxes, God will mysteriously upgrade the contents before they arrive to the child.

As we were talking on the way home, we decided that when people are packing shoeboxes, they should go for quality over quantity.  For instance, we could tell that one person or group had packed 10 boxes because they all had the same items in them. It might have been better for this person or group to only pack 5 boxes and make sure the items in the boxes were a little nicer.  I'm just saying that because someone is poor doesn't mean you should give them a bunch of junk.  But again, that's where prayer and God come in to make this a beautiful ministry!

The boxes we were packing were going to be going to Peru.

Last night Sarah had another swim meet.  She was very annoyed that she had to swim the IM again!  Apparently, her coach told her he needed her to do it (not sure why) so she did it.  She was less nervous this time and actually cut some time from last week's time BUT doing this IM meant that her time on the 100 backstroke (her fave) went up.   She was frustrated but she can always get that time back down next week.

Here are some pictures from last week's meet and last night's meet: