Sunday with John

I managed to get a lot of things done today. Part of working full time means getting so little time to clean and shop. I try to alternate Sundays between major cleaning and major shopping. Also on Sundays, we go to church. To be honest, since Tim started working on Sundays, it's been increasingly difficult. Sometimes I go at 6 PM, sometimes at 11:30 AM and sometimes, well, it doesn't happen. With Advent starting last week, I am trying to make an effort to go.

I managed to wake up a sleepy Tim just after eight. We both got in our showers before John woke up. We ate breakfast, packed his bag, dressed him and we were off. The weather was quite icky! I felt sorry for our little guy.

We went to our pew and I noticed that there was babysitting. I knew there was sitting, but we never seem to make it to 10 AM (the Mass with the babysitting). Since John spent most of the previous week's Mass being a challenge, we decided to give ourselves a break and let him play. Babysitting is for 15 months to 5, so mostly for those kids at the most challenging ages. I thought a baby was challenging, but babies usually don't want to get up, walk around, chat people up and the like. It was nice to have a break and focus on the Mass. However, I kind of felt like I was missing my right arm the whole time.

Usually, around the Feast of St. Nicholas, there is a homily featuring John the Baptist (usually a deacon or the Father) and Santa Claus. They discuss their perspective roles in Christmas. John, leading the way for Jesus and St. Nicholas discussed his start as a bishop and talked about the virtues of gift giving. It was really nicely done this year and the banter between the two deacons was amusing. (Santa talking about how he is younger than John and getting a few laughs.) It is really one of my favorite homilies of the year. I'm kind of glad John wasn't there because it might have been hard to keep him from Santa.

Surprisingly, we found out that the Men's Club was hosting cookies with Santa. We picked John up, who according to the Babysitting Monitor was very well behaved. We ran into another young couple and their son who is a bit older than John. The two of them shared some cookies, which was cute. Finally, John got to see Santa and liked it. I wonder since he does know the Deacon if he knew who he really was! Okay, he's not even two. LOL!

We really enjoyed the cookies and some juice. Most of all, I liked the treat bags they gave away. It was Happy Birthday Jesus bags with some color books and crayons. Despite Jesus being a blond (Maybe God's a blond?), it was really fitting since all these Christmas books out there tend to be more secular in nature. John colored in them most of the evening!

We stopped and had some sandwiches as I had to go shopping and Tim had to go to work. It's funny how meaningful times like those where we get to have an outing as a family really are. It was over all too soon and we went our separate ways.

First on the agenda was Costco. I have a love/hate relationship with Costco. I try not to go too often because I end up spending more than I'd like. We got diapers, pop, water, apple sauce, chips, some treats for work and a few other small things all for $120. The best part is that John got to see Auntie Kiki twice!

Then, it was off to Walmart, another money pit! We got a few more groceries and some Christmas gifts and called it a day.

We mostly relaxed. I did some chores and made dinner for the two of us. It was really a nice and relaxing evening.