Christmas Eve

We had a great relaxing day on Christmas Eve with the normal preparations for the big day.  We got all dressed up for a wonderful Christmas Eve Service at 5pm.  We headed home and had a fun dinner of Oyster Stew, crabcakes and scallops.  The kids were antsy to get out of their clothes so we gave them a big giant present bag to open.  Inside were coffee mugs for all of us (the kids loved their grown up mugs like mommy's!), hot chocolate, marshmallows and Christmas pj's.  We had just heard a Christmas children's sermon about the movie, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and so we decided to sit down with our cocoa and watch it together.  Boy is that movie dated!!!!!  But we enjoyed it anyway!

The kids were very eager to get to bed that night!!! We read the Nativity story together and then hopped in our beds to sleep!!!

Cookies!!!

Noah was at a play date and Maeve and I got to bake all kinds of cookies! We worked for hours!!!!

Isn't she cute?

The Nutcracker

As a child I remember my grandmother taking me to the Nutcracker Ballet quite often at Christmastime.   I thought it would be great this year to take the kids since Maeve was doing ballet.  The kids had also seen the Wonderpets Save the Nutcracker and so they were familiar with the story and the music!  

We got all fancied up and headed to the theater.  The kids were so excited to go to the theater.  We brought Daddy, Nana, MomMom, Great Grandmom and Great Grandpop.  

I was a bit nervous because it didn't start until 7:30 but the kids did GREAT!!!! Noah watched very intently with binoculars and Maeve was antsy but paid attention.  Silly Noah kept calling it a movie so I realized we need to keep this theater tradition up to help them see a different way to tell a story!

1st Grade Christmas Party

Here is Noah with his first grade class at their Christmas Party.  The home room moms and I had a great time planning and getting ready for the party!

They made awesome coffee cup cozies

Snowman handprint ornaments

They played a bunch of minute to win it games



And I was out in the hall working on the teacher gift with them.  We glued 7 boxes of candy canes onto a wreath and then each child wrote their name on a christmas ball and glued it on.  It came out so well!!!  She loved it.

Christmas County Spelling Bee

This Christmas Noah had the privilege of being a part of an amazing choir production.  Since October he has been practicing once a week for this show and the 70 kids in choir did such a wonderful job!  The whole concept of the show was a fake spelling be where contestants spelled the names of Jesus and the two winners got to play Mary and Joseph in the Christmas pageant.  

As a first grader, Noah didn't really get a part other than chorus but he did get to sing the first verse of Silent Night in a small group.  He practiced so much for his verse!

The show was on a Saturday afternoon and lasted about an hour.  The place was packed and there was audience participation!!!! It was a wonderful afternoon.  We're so proud of you buddy!!!  

Noah is a tad left of center above the woman in white in a red sweater with snowflakes

And here's Maeve watching the show!

Cousins

My kiddos really look forward to seeing their second cousin Zac whenever they can. The picture doesn't reflect the Christmas joy!

Poor Elf