Rock Wall

Yes, you can see here that the elf is scaling the refrigerator - trying to get to Madison's candy.  By all appearances, he's actually gotten some of the candy.  The bits he is using to climb up the side are actually peppermint candies, glued to small magnets.  Madison was quite surprised to see him there this morning, and yes, he pretty much hung around there all day today.  This is the fun time of year, when we get to see what Jingle is up to next!

December 2nd means more advent fun on the calendar.  Yesterday, we focused on an angel - and today we talked about the shepherds.  Mommy had a craft that Madison made, which turned out pretty good.

But there's the other advent calendar too:  a chocolate one!  Jingle got her one of those again for this year, a box with little doors to open, one for each day.  Inside, there is chocolate!  This is a bit more exciting than the 3D pop-up Advent Calendar booklet we have, the one we've been using for years now with Madison.  She finds the little doors, and inside each one is a different object related to the Nativity set.

Today we returned to piano practice, and hit the ground running on that one.  We're doing some more advanced stuff, and it is stretching somewhat, especially this late in the season.  Christmas is just around the corner, but other things in life go on, including piano practice.  I for one am glad to keep this routine going, because you lose a lot of ground if you take too much time off.  Madison seemed pretty quick to pick up on things, so we were glad to see she was still doing well enough to keep up with Mrs. Pam.

So more Christmas play practice tonight.  That means we missed the new Toy Story cartoon.  Also, part of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.," which sort of ended on a bummer note.  But it is still a nice little cozy routine for Mommy and Daddy at the end of a Tuesday.

As for play practice, it is going well.  One song sounds really nice, and we changed a bit of the blocking as we move forward.  Also, I'm working on some tweaks for certain bits of dialogue.  These things are only discovered as you go to practice on stage, or you find strengths and weaknesses in certain actors.  A tiny example of this would be one of our orphans and her inability to say the phrase, "a good night's sleep."  Every single time, she says, "A good snight sleep."  So we change the dialogue to make it less risky.  That's a tiny example.  A bigger one would be the dialogue for the role of 'minister,' which went to a young lady.  It was a lot to say, so it was decided to divide it up in two parts, one before and after a nice Christmas song.  This means a tweak in the dialogue, of course.

So we keep moving forward.  Today we did a lot with background music and the kids choir director.  And props too.  Mommy found a nice one for our centerpiece watch.

Less than two weeks to go on this one.  It could be big.