Zzzzzz

The great news is this:  Santa is completely done with all of Madison's presents, and his elves today finished wrapping every single one.  Can you believe that?  No stress about that one, and Mommy and Daddy are pretty happy about it.

We did quite a bit of piano practice today, as we didn't have as much time to do that with all the Christmas drama practices of late.  "Dancing Bears" and "Turkey in the Straw" dominated today's practices - and I still don't quite understand the lyrics so much.

We watched another Christmas favorite "Olive the Other Reindeer" before Madison went to bed - if you haven't seen it, you should.  My favorite part might be Michael Stipe as Schnitzel the Flightless Reindeer, although the cartoon is pretty amazing all the way through:  great music, funny jokes, and really unique animation.

Madison's bed time story had to do with Princess Leia, elves and Christmas.  No joke - she wanted those ingredients in a bedtime story, and so be it!  It was a fun little tale about rescuing elves, and saving Christmas.  Everyone is always saving Christmas, aren't they?

The title of today's entry pretty much says it all:  we rested today.  We've been completely wiped out after yesterday's big day.  There was a funeral that Daddy went to in the afternoon, which was really moving.  But beyond that, the big news of the day was the announcement from the North Pole that all of Madison's Christmas shopping - and wrapping - was complete.  Usually, those elves are wrapping things way past midnight on Christmas Eve, so that is indeed good news that will help with the stress levels this year! 

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2012

Old Fashioned Christmas

So we finally made it to our long, long day.  You can see from the picture above that Madison was ready for it.  She was with us at our first service at 7:00 am, although we all had to arrive a few hours earlier than that.  Here's the cast of our radio show drama below:

Daddy is with his friends, and we spent the morning together doing an old fashioned radio show, where  everyone narrated the story along, and made unusual sound effects to go along with the strange tale.  It was obviously based on some of the Prairie Home Companion radio shows, complete with references to Nordic people and heavy snow.  And it was pretty fun - by the third service, we had it down very comfortably, and getting a lot of laughs.

Meanwhile, Madison was enjoying the first of our series, "All Aboard."  The train on the set was magnificent:

Today's message was based on "The Polar Express" somewhat, although another message later on goes deeper into that theme.  It was still a great deal of fun.  The points in the message that Daddy wrote actually were supported by various clips from the movie, which was fun to show in the auditorium.

We had three services, and it was quite a long day.  And yesterday was a really long day too - especially for Mommy, who was dressing up people that lived in Whoville, old time radio show hosts, and more.  She took a nap in the afternoon, but Madison was in no mood for a nap, for some odd reason.  She tried it, but just wasn't able to sleep.  So Daddy snuck her downstairs, and we put the television on mute and went to Lego Star Wars for a few hours - almost done with that game!  One more round, and I think we'll have 160 bricks or so.  That makes no sense to someone who hasn't played yet, but the game is pretty massive - we've been playing it on and off since June.

Of course, the news last month about Star Wars was big.  Don't think we've noted it here, but Disney bought Lucasfilm, so Princess Leia is now a Disney Princess.  We're pretty excited about this, and the prospect of new movies along the way.  Madison is a Star Wars fan, although she's only seen Episode IV (A New Hope), and a few cartoons.  She also has a few books, including one that she found under her tree this morning.

Each morning in December, she's finding a small present under the tree, along with opening doors in her advent calendar.  She's got a chocolate one, thanks to Nana, and of course there's her advent calendar book, which has a pop-up Nativity Scene in it.  Daddy spent a lot of time talking about the story of Jesus' birth, pretty much saying most of it until his journey to Egypt.  We'll reinforce that throughout the month, rather than have the importance of the message get lost in the month.  I simply love what Linus says in "A Charlie Brown Christmas."  After Charlie Brown asks if anyone knows what Christmas is all about, Linus simply responds by quoting from the Bible, in Luke, Chapter 2.  That's all it is, really.

To that end, one of the presents she's gotten under the tree is a new picture Bible for kids her age.  She's got in the living room, flipping through pages and looking through the stories in it.  This is thrilling for Mommy and Daddy, of course.  It's what the season is about!