Sunday

My sweet girls on the first Sunday of Advent.

It is so hard to know how to dress them these days.  Many Sundays it’s so warm, but I don’t really want to put them in spring colors.  Oy.  :)

Saturday afternoon was the Christmas Pageant!!

These are my cutie patootie Lil’ Angels with St. Nicklaus.

I just love this group of kids – aren’t they adorable?!

There’s my little Nattie goat!

And my sweet angel Joanna.

The directors had a song to sing toward the beginning of the pageant.  (No, I do not need a fashion intervention; I was a shepherd in the show.)

There’s my sweet Joanna, right by the music stand.  I’m very thankful she’s short and is always in the front!

There I am with my little choir of animals.  (Jan thought it would be a good idea to have adults on the stage with all of those three and four year olds.  Smart woman, that one.)

I’m glad I was able to be on the stage corralling little ones and snuggling my Nattie goat, but I missed getting to see Joanna sing!  (If anyone got video, I would really love love to see it!)

The pageant told the Christmas story but it also touched on Christmas legends like where the Christmas tree came from and who St. Nicklaus was.

You can see Natalie’s goat ears peeking out – she’s sitting in my lap.  There was a song I think some of the children sort of forgot to sing (or were distracted because of St. Nick) so I was singing in my most child-like voice, but I was trying to hide my mouth behind Natalie’s head.  :)

After the program, they had us stay put for a few minutes so the paparazzi could take some pics.  :)

Directly after that was Advent Workshop in the gym.  IT WAS SLAMMED!  I’m glad so many people were there for it, but oh my that was too many people in one room for me!  My mom was there to see the musical and I had asked her if she would take James home with her while we did crafts with the girls.  I got his little handprint done (the last few years there has been a hand/foot print craft which I just love!), and he ate some pizza before heading home with my mom.

It was so crammed in there though that I didn’t want to stay.  So I grabbed a couple of crafts to take home and made sure to get the girls’ prints done as well first.

Their hands made little mangers and they used their thumb for baby Jesus’ head.

They turned out very sweet; I should take a picture of them hanging in my dining room

We ate pizza up at the church but enjoyed doing our crafts at home, with a little breathing room.  I’m very glad for the huge turnout though!

It was a lovely Sunday, full of wonderful Adventy things.

Photo-a-Day Challenge

I saw this list on Pinterest of 31 photo topics to do in December, one each day, and I decided to do it!  I decided it over a week ago, however, and plum forgot once December actually rolled around.  So the first couple of days I had to go back and find pictures I’d already taken that worked for the day’s assignment.

December 1 – “Your view of the day”

This one rather worked out perfectly.  It was dress rehearsal for the Pageant, and I had my little camera with me up in the Chancel.  (I was shepherding my choir.)  This was my view of the action.

December 2 – Favorite Holiday Movie

This one is a stretch, for sure.  :)  I think my favorite Christmas flick is “Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown.”  There’s a Christmas pageant in that movie, which really works out well, timing wise.  But I had to use a picture I took, not a picture Matt took of the actual pageant.  Since I was in it, I only have the pics I took before.

{Which reminds me, if any of y’all have pics of the Pageant with especially Natalie in them, I’d love you to send them to me!  Matt got some of Joanna, but not really Natalie.  And if anybody videoed it; I’d LOVE to see it!}

I’ll do a proper post of Sunday’s pictures soon, but I wanted to get the first few days of my challenge up before I forgot again!  And I haven’t finished going through them yet.

December 3 – Red

I took this picture “on purpose” since I remembered the challenge this evening.    I didn’t have a ton of choices since the children had already gone to bed and it was dark, but I like this one!  Matt’s little red cars on the train tree.

Super Yogurt

James got his turn with Natalie’s new cape yesterday evening.  He kept saying what sounded like “Super Grover,” which makes sense because we watch Sesame Street from time to time, but that wasn’t it.

Come to find out he was saying “Super Yogurt.”

That is a superhero name I hadn’t heard yet.  :)

Ladybug

Faces

I’m actually going to send Christmas cards this year (really!), and a wonderfully talented friend is going to design them for me.  I did have to get some decent pics for it though!  These are some “outtakes” from one attempt on Friday, I think.

They’re gorgeous.  :)

Happy Birthday Graham, Aiden, and Seth–whew!

After our big rehearsal this morning, Natalie and I went to Graham’s birthday party!

It was a superhero party – love it!

How cute is Super Natalie’s cape?!!

And how cute are these cookies?!!

That party was pretty awesome, that’s for sure.

And even though I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, I think this may be the first birthday party I’ve brought just Natalie to.

Same cutie patootie friends from this morning!

Love the cape flying!

We stayed for about an hour before heading to Aiden and Seth’s party. 

{I’m a hundred percent sure I should qualify for some kind of government aide to receive a GPS due to my direction-deficiency.  :) And obviously I’m kidding because I don’t think that’s how the government should spend it’s money.  But seriously I could have gone through the neighborhood between these two parties but was really lucky just to make it out to a main road I was familiar with.  It’s sad.}

But Natalie and I eventually made it and met up with the other 3/5ths of our family.

It was a robot/science party!  Here’s Mr. Scott the science guy!

They made some kind of goo.  Matt had the camera here; I was sitting on my behind – ahhhhhh…

The robot cake!

Kimberly had this dip set out with a whole bunch of crackers.  In case anyone is wondering, it was this guy (points arrow down) who ate all the crackers.  :)

But how can you resist a face like that?

I didn’t get great shots of the birthday boys, but here’s Aiden in the yellow opening a present.

And Seth in the green opening a present.

We had a lot of fun at these parties today and are so very thankful God made Graham, Aiden, and Seth!

The Christmas Pageant, a sneak peak

This morning we had final dress rehearsal for the Children’s Christmas Pageant.  I’m so excited! 

Here is Natalie with a  couple of her buds from the Lil’ Angels (my sweet sweet choir!).  Sarah and Graham are in her class at school too.

Joanna and her bestie:

Natalie’s class are all animals.  She’s a cutie patootie goat!

Logan the donkey – so cute!

Look at all those animals!

Some sweet angels:

A very cute bumblebee.  Seth wasn’t totally  sold on the idea of all of this costume business, but he warmed up to it.  :)

There’s my Joanna angel!

I think it is going to be so so precious, and a fantastic way to begin Advent tomorrow!