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Sunday school class I'd be in if I went to Sunday School AND church, instead of just church. It's...gotten better over the years. My good church friend is in the class, and of course I love her dearly, and there's a couple other women in the class I like but for a while there, most of the women in the class were...ah...complainers. My good church friend and a couple other women would run themselves ragged planning the party, setting it up, cleaning up, etc., and the complainers would show up at the start of the party, complain about nearly everything and then leave as soon as the hostesses thanked us for coming and told us to have a good rest of our day. The worst was a trio of years about 10 years ago...the first of those years, they told everyone to bring a small gift (under $10). The complainers complained about getting something they didn't want. So the next year, we were told to bring a $10 gift card for a store or restaurant. The complainers complained about the gift cards they got--"I hate that place!" and "The food is terrible!" and "I don't have one of these near me and I'm not making the drive out to it!". Ugh. The next year, there were no gifts...yep, the complainers complained about not getting gifts.

Fortunately, the complainers have mostly either stopped coming to our church or stopped coming to the party (in a couple instances, they've passed away). This year, the party organizers did a better job splitting up the responsibilities so nobody got overwhelmed trying to do multiple things. There was a nice spread from a decent restaurant and everyone took home a lovely homemade card and clip on poinsettia blossom (each year, the party has a theme; this year it was poinsettias). We played a game and I won; I got a lovely gift bag full of fun little goodies (and one I didn't care for but I'm not complaining <g>). We also had a drawing, with four lucky people getting to take home one of the (gorgeous and fortunately fake) poinsettia table centerpieces and I actually won one of those too. I swear, this year I've won more things than I probably have in all my other years combined.

As for Christmas shopping, I'd say I'm about 75-80% done. All I really need to do is pick up a gift card as the final touch on my good church friend's gift, make some rosemary infused oil as part of another friend's gift...and think of what to get my bff as her "big" gift. She's been wanting experiences more than things the last few years, and I'm totally down with that, but this year, there's no big, obvious event that stands out as something we should do, like last year's tickets to see Hamilton.