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After our November Thanksgiving Fest, I’ve been all blogged out!

I’ve got a few other things to update about, but I really just wanted to post a little something tonight and wish everyone a Merry Christmas. Driving home from book club tonight, listening to Josh Groban’s Christmas album, I started to feel the first inkling of the true Christmas spirit this year. It’s arrived late for a few reasons, but somehow driving at night through country lanes listening to “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” made me think of the long drives to family Christmas parties and school Christmas concerts and late night, last minute Christmas shopping trips of Christmases past. And for some reason, more so than wrapping presents, getting out the Christmas decorations, decorating the tree, and a few Christmas-themed church activities, it finally made it feel like Christmas to me.

I made the following video last year for the Christmas lesson I gave at church, and I wanted to share it again. The music is Josh Groban, and the pictures are collected mainly from LDS artists and the Church library. I was trying to convey the divine mission of the Savior and who the babe born in Bethlehem really was — I hope it will bring some of the glad tidings of the “reason for the season” to you.

What Child Is This? / Oh Come All Ye Faithful from Alasdair & Melissa Macleod on Vimeo.

So tonight I was in charge of the activity for Young Mens.

It was “Ready, steady, cook”

I had 10 teenage boys cooking in a kitchen about the same size as ours at home with 2 ovens and 6 rings on the stove between them.

One of the more intense hours of my year but at the end of it we had 3 main dishes and a dessert cooked and tasted.

All were edible and one of the mains and the dessert I would happily eat any day.

Dishes were

Cottage pie
Sausage pasta bake
Tomato pasta
Apple crumble

Detailed organisation made a real difference, recipe cards printed out ahead of time, 4 stations in the kitchen with all the ingredients and utensils each team needed.

We actually ended up feeding a few people (Bishop included) who were up at the chapel after skipping their dinner.

The winning dishes were the sausage pasta bake and the apple crumble.

It all went really well but the level of effort and interaction needeed was about the same as running a professional kitchen on a Friday night, took me back a bit.

Intense, challenging, fun and rewarding, a pretty good way to spend a Tuesday evening.

Finally the thing I am most thankful for is this life. The whole encompassing bubble of my existence that includes

My super extended family, wife, siblings parents, in laws, cousins everyone.

My experiences, I have had a lot of great things happen to me, I have seen some amazing sights and I hope to see many more.

My opportunities, even the ones I am sad for not having taken.

My friends, I have a few good friends which is all anyone needs, I would stand by some of them to the end and know they would for me.

My hopes and dreams for people and the world.

My thoughts that in all of the entire universe are unique to me.

All these things combine to mean that never before and never again will someone else know, think, feel, remember and dream exactly what I do.

I have been given this unique gift of life and I am truly thankful for it, I am surrounded by the beauty of creation every day, sometimes it is harder than others to see it through its grimy grey mask, but it is there.