#1,462 Benedictus.

This morning was my favorite worship service of the whole year—the Christmas concert with full orchestra and choir. I sing with the choir every year and a few times it was easy to be overcome by how the orchestra seemed to fill up the whole world with a beautiful sound. I would forget what I was supposed to be singing. Of course, the song I looked forward to the most was What Sweeter Music, a song I was singing in my college concert choir the week Ben and I met, that we had a choir sing at our wedding. It was amazing to be part of it again.

The sanctuary was so packed, there was standing room only in the aisles. I’m so proud of our church’s music program. It’s world-class—something you could hear in a big city.

Tonight was Italian night so I cooked a big big BIG pot of from-scratch meatballs and spaghetti and Mrs. Ina from church gave me her divine cream cheese shortbread pecan cookie recipe and I made a couple dozen. Though now there’s about 6 left. Oops.

I didn’t take a photo, but these cookies… I mean. The best cookies on earth. They’re very soft, a little chewy, very very buttery, not too sweet and a little bit fluffy. If you would like to have the cookie recipe, here you go!

Mrs. Ina’s Cream Cheese Cookies

Ingredients:
1 cup butter
4 oz. cream cheese
1 cup sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp  vanilla
2 1/4 c. flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder

Cream butter and cream cheese together.  Add sugar then egg yolk and vanilla.  Add flour, salt, and baking powder gradually. Scoop onto ungreased cookie sheet.  Top with a pecan half.

Bake at 350 degrees for 12-14 minutes. Try to keep yourself from eating them all alone.

Then we got a very happy surprise visitor… Emily and Josh are moving back home from Pennsylvania and she saw my post about spaghetti on instagram and came over to get a plate as soon as she rolled back into town. Josh is a few hours behind her in the moving truck so we’ll see him tomorrow. Yay! Our crew is all together again for Christmas!