We hope you all had a very Happy Christmas!

Our snowy Irish Christmas was quite busy but still loads of fun! After two cantor/organist Masses, one Children’s Vigil Mass, one 9pm Vigil Mass, and one Folk Group Mass on Christmas Day, our liturgical music responsibilities were finally complete.

We spent the rest of Christmas Day with the Hennessy’s,  a wonderful Irish family from the parish. Dinner was beautiful and had me feeling so “legit” Irish, complete with plum pudding, mince pies and Christmas Crackers (which by the way are SO much fun and are definitively becoming a part of my family tradition from now on!) The family did everything to make us feel right at home, including the post-dinner movie watch/snooze! It was loads of fun and even though we might have wished we could have been in our own homes, we were all very grateful to spend the day with such a loving family.

In keeping with the random Irish weather, Christmas night brought on a huge thaw and by the time we woke up on the 26th, the snow was practically all gone! We’re now back to the typical raining sideways which is still no fun but at least gives us hope for getting out and about since the Irish are way more used to dealing with rain.

We’re now heading in to a very different period of time for our community as it will not be just the four of us for a while. Today we welcome two of Jessica’s siblings, on Wednesday another friend from the states, and then we will all be taking various holidays throughout Europe at the beginning of January before welcoming more friends from Spain, China and the states. It’s sure to be a grand time!

Thank you all for your continued thoughts and prayers. We certainly are a very blessed bunch!