Friends, Family & Faith [Monday's Musings]

The good wife and I followed up Friday evening's wonderful fellowship with friends with a Saturday morning trip to 'Bronners' in Frankenmuth to celebrate the birthdays of our Daughter-In-Law and grandson. Bronners is billed as Michigan's Largest Christmas Store[they claim its the World's largest; and have 6,000 different styles of ornaments and 400 nativity scenes], open 351 days a year; but like most people everyone shows up after the first day in December. We parked the car in the back 80, because the back 40 was all taken up .......... and it was like that all day long! The store however is unapologetically about celebrating CHRISTmas .. I've never seen so many different 'nativity' scene's! With the number of people there it would have been a perfect training ground for 'crowd control.' Nevertheless we had a great time showing the grandkids all the nativity scenes, the different reindeer and santa's and trinkets. My wife pointed out to me how when our kids were given a choice of many magnets to choose from they both chose the name magnets with a nativity scene! We celebrated their birthdays over 'chicken lunches' at Zenders restaurant [I must add that probably for the first time in family history my choices for both gifts to our daughter -in- law and grandson were presented] , one of the best chicken restaurants around, with the except of Chick-fil-a; and they certainly are second to none in having excellent 'cole slaw.' The meal is served family style and I made sure than neither bowl of cole slaw was left. Finally it was time to return home, and as we got on the road two things got my attention, first we needed gas and second the tire inflation light came on. Now often in changes of weather that light will come on because air adjustments need to be made in the tires, however stopping for gas upon examining the tires and found the one was almost totally flat, and when putting air in discovered the little screw that had lodged itself in our tire. It was getting near 3pm on Saturday afternoon, and I knew that we would be stopping at every exit for air, but less than 1/4 of a mile from the station was a tire shop, and bless the Lord, when we got there we discovered they were still open for another 45 minutes. They patched the inside of the tire and we were back on the road in shortly over a half-hour, it is amazing how God is always looking out for us. What a weekend, with family and friends and a faithful God. I must admit before closing the book on that weekend that I misread map quest and took my wife and I over 40minutes out of our way to Bronners ... We had hopped to get there early and my wife have a few minutes to do some shopping on her own, but as it was our kids beat us there by about 20 minutes; since its 2hrs from home I doubt I'll get her back there, with grace maybe she'll forgive me! Tonight[Monday] we're scheduled to make an hour and a half journey to Jackson for a District Christmas dinner, so it will be back on the road again.
The 'big snow' isn't expected until Wednesday night so hopefully we won't have to fight bad weather, this is the season.............