Perhaps now I can call Christmas officially over too.

I went to Barry's last service today. How many last services can a person attend in December? It was nice to be back at St Peter's. I've been twice in one week, that's more than I've been to my own church. There are some many lovely people at St Peter's going back makes me feel like I'm seeing old family. I talked to some of my youth group kids. They are lovely. We sang a lot of the prayer book today. Normally that's a bit of fun, but they changed all the tunes this time, they did a prayer book re-mix so I didn't know what I was singing. I do like the prayer book. They talked about proclaiming the Gospel through the sacraments, and reading that was a really exciting idea for me. Sometimes I like the prayer book.

Amen.

Let us continue with the blog
For it is right for us to continue with this post

Barry bailed me up as I left the Church and shook his hand. He gave me lots of advice about how I should be picking my subjects for the advanced diploma. That was very nice of him.

Going home after Church I cleaned up some dog poo on the stairs then Hannah, Jo, Tinku and I all drove off to Wollongong.

Getting there late we found the cousins' house full of relos. Most I knew, some I didn't really. Some guy walked up to me and shook my hand and told me it was a log time since we'd spoken. This I was sure was true because it took me about a minute to figure out who this bloke was. He was a second cousin. About 2 hours after arriving I managed to find out his name. The rest of my second cousins that were there I didn't talk to at all.

Once I arrived I slipped into my "am with the relos" mode, and resigned myself to the fact that most of these people don't laugh at my jokes, but are nice to me anyway. I never really feel like I know my cousin's very well, but I like them all very much.

I think I should use the word "splendid" more often and "luscious".

I think I had a conversation with almost everyone there about Return of the King. Small talk makes the world go round. During cracker pulling I made a joke about the hats all being green so you could wear them during the war and not getting bombed. I expected polite laughter but I got a good reception, suddenly I felt a lot closer to all my relatives.

We had a cousins' conference about what to do about our Grandfather's memorial service. We all sat around and discussed stuff. I didn't say much but it occurred to me that this is what real people do when family members die. I felt awfully real and awfully grown up.

At the end of the day I drove Mum, Dad and Hannah home. Dad had a sore back.

Jo dropped Tinku off at the airport. Tinku's gone to Bangladesh. Bye Tinks!

And that is my day.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
In the name of Christ. Amen