One last Christmas memory from 2011...

As all of our Christmas decor is packed up tight (with the exception of the outside lights), I wanted to jot down one last Christmas memory for the blog.  It's actually a Christmas Eve memory....

We decided to attend Christmas Eve service here on Fort Belvoir instead of driving up to our church in Alexandria this year.  The church here is closer and we thought it would work better with our schedule for the evening.  So, after I got online to look up service times for that night, I saw there was one at 5pm and then a candle-light service at 7pm.  So, we decided to attend the 5 o'clock service. 

We walk into the church just a few minutes before 5, and some older gentlemen standing at the entrance to the sanctuary tell us that there are some seats in the front row, in the middle.  This church has 2 aisles going up the middle.  So, we were literally up front in the middle.  A minute passes, the kids are behaving nicely and then the choir stands (right next to us, on our right) and an older lady speaks softly into the microphone... "Thank you for coming to Christmas Eve Mass.  Please stand and join us as we welcome Priest..... as we sing, O Come all ye Faithful.".  WHAT??!!! MASS!!!

We are not Catholic, we are Baptist and there would be a whole lot of confusion and questions later on that night from our children!!  So... Bryant looked at me and said, "I am not attending Mass.".  Of which I obviously said, "well, what are we supposed to do? We can't leave. (we are in the FRONT)".  Bryant, "Oh yah, watch me!".  He then, walks past the choir and down one of the middle aisles.  I look at the kids and say, "follow your father".  As we are exiting, hoping that somehow no one sees us (yah right!! we were in the front, middle!!), the Priest is walking up to the front in the other middle aisle!

As we were driving back to the house I was still in shock over the fact that we just left!  Then Bryant started talking about the shared communion cup, hail Mary's and so on and I started to feel much better about leaving versus staying.  Then Nathan said, "it's OK mom, we can just do church service at home!".... and so we did.

If you are Catholic, this is not meant to be offensive.  This is a memory that I wanted to jot down, so that we can read back on it and laugh!!  Because every time I think about it I break out in a giggle, just remembering my husband say, "Oh yah, watch me!" and then ducking out.