back from the edge of the universe

I fell off the edge of the universe but now I'm back.

Really, we celebrated Christmas with family before Christmas -- five hours from here. I had trouble getting my laptop to stay on the network at my sister's house. We finally figured it out the night before we left.

We served Christmas supper at the local homeless shelter that takes families. We've served there a couple of times before. Our church is on a regular rotation and I usually join whatever Sunday School is serving. Christmas fell on our day. There was a little confusion with the shelter about if they needed us or not. In the end, we served. We had kids, two jr high and one elementary, and adults who worked together to serve so the food was hot when the folks came to the serving window. When we have been there before we have seen small children and infants, but this time seemed to be mostly adult men. While I'd rather no one need to be in a homeless shelter on Christmas, I was glad the families with children were not in abundance.

The girls went to their dad after serving at the shelter. Since I haven't come anywhere close to taking all of my vacation time, I left again, too.

The girls are back, school has started, our routine is returning, and so I am no longer lost over the edge of the universe.

However, we have discovered geocaching. We are having tons of fun. Some discribe it as hide and seek with a GPS. If you are curious you can visit www.geocaching.com (blogger won't let me do the link) to check it out. When I put in our coords, we discovered a cache that is very close to our house. The excitement was greater than for Santa. We've been hooked, we hooked my sister, and we have a reason not to be couch potatoes.

I start the last two of three classes before dissertation on Jan 16. I'm taking Grief and Bereavement (maybe a preacher could use that) and Qualitative Research Methods.