This has been a very busy and exciting Christmas! I took on planning the church Christmas party with my friend (luckily, she was better at it than I was). I did a lot of work organizing it, but not as much as she did. As the primary president, one of my big tasks was to prepare the children for a little Nativity play, which turned out beautifully, if not perfectly well organized. Heidi was chosen to be Mary (she just happened to be the only girl at church that day who wasn't already part of a solo or small group for singing) and she was so excited for that role. Asher was chosen to be Gabriel, the lead angel, and Leif was chosen to be Joseph (all by luck of the draw, not their mother's favoritism), but another boy was upset, so Leif decided to be the lead shepherd instead and let him be Joseph. I was so busy scrambling back and forth getting the right kids into the scenes and reminding them what they were supposed to do, that I didn't get any pictures taken (Austin was also pretty busy the whole party either helping to set up or socializing;) but a friend got a few pictures of Heidi and Asher, sadly none of Leif.
I also took the three oldest kids to the ballet The Nutcracker this year, but I didn't get any photos. They enjoyed it, but Leif fell asleep briefly and Heidi was quite antsy for the last half of it.
Our church also does a much larger scale Nativity pageant for the town on the nights before Christmas (3 night this year, two shows a night). Heidi, Trevor, and I missed the second night because they were melting down long before we ever got there and its a pretty late night, but we went to the first and third nights. We were townspeople for all of the nights, Austin was a Roman centurion for all of the shows, and Asher and Leif were angels for most of the shows, but shepherds for one.
Heidi doesn't look particularly thrilled in this photo, but she was really excited to get to sit on the donkey for a little while. Trevor loved petting the donkey, the llama (no camels), and the sheep too.
Here Heidi is with the llama, though he's so black you can hardly see him .
10 points if you can spot both Asher and Leif- I'm not sure where they are in this photo, but they were there, loving it! This is a park that we go to quite a bit when its warm outside and they refer to this hill as "angel hill" because they hide behind it for the whole pageant until the part that says "a multitude of heavenly host appeared" and they get to run up into the spotlight.
After the show on Christmas Eve, Austin had to help clean up and I got the kids undressed and into the car and we hustled home to prepare for Santa to come. Here is what the tree looked like after Santa visited (our kids were quite spoiled this year). Asher really wanted Santa to set up the train track around the tree just like he did last year, plus add some track and a new train for Trevor's gift, so that's what happened.
The rest of the pictures are from Christmas morning. Asher asked for a Bruder crane, Leif wanted a police Lego truck (he didn't get quite what he was expecting, but close), and Heidi wanted a pink princess castle (she got magnets that form into a castle, but can be used to build anything and go with the other building magnets we already have)
Our parents got to watch the kids open the presents from them via FaceTime on my iPad. Thank heavens for technology. (Although, when my dad called, the kids were pretty grumpy!)
We got Trevor his own baby doll because he is always stealing Heidi's. Its the same doll as hers, only its dressed in blue. I think the best squeal of the morning came from Trevor when he opened this present. (Although Heidi also got a doll stroller {free from our neighbors} and now Trevor is jealous of that and still keeps stealing her doll while its in the stroller).
Austin has been much better about playing with the kids today than I have! I took lots of pictures, cleaned up, and needed to rest. I did play Heidi's new game with her though. Austin has been building castles, driving trucks around, helping with Lego construction, etc, etc!
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