Do Not Feed the Animals

It was a zoo in the house this morning - literally.  Jingle Bell seemed to have everything all set up this morning, although he seemed to be breaking all his own rule, "Do Not Feed the Animals."  Oh well, it's the least he could do for those three animals stuffed in that cage.

Rainy weather outside, and cold too.  Not cold enough to be frozen, but still a somewhat yucky sort of day.  It didn't matter so much to us though, as Daddy has to spend time recovering from that surgery.  Let it rain outside and be as miserable as it wants - it was time for a Christmas Movie Marathon.  Sure enough, we had the fire roaring, and even some hot chocolate.

It wasn't all 'sit-back-and-relax' today though.  We did go in to the office for a bit to set up for tomorrow's service.  Mommy was spending time gathering costumes for a Nativity skit tomorrow, while Daddy was working on other parts of the service, like Christmas trivia.  We're doing a Western Christmas series, so the questions had to be more focused on Cowboys and Christmas.  Which is harder than you think.  I mean, the two biggies I thought up were the cowboy in "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer," and Ralphie's cowboy adventure in "A Christmas Story."  Also, what singing cowboy was it that made the song "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" famous?  And from what western state did the US Capital Tree come from?  Those were just a few that we were able to brainstorm.  It'll be a good service tomorrow.

On the way home, we decided to go pick up the book that was put on hold for us earlier.  It's a Never Girls book with a Christmas theme, "A Fairy's Gift."  Tonight before bed we were starting that one off, hopefully be done just in time for the big day.  Madison is into it so far!  So it was a bit of Christmas mode today, full on.  We were coloring in stained glass window crafts and even wrapping some presents.  Mommy spent some time making her delicious reindeer mix, otherwise known as "Christmas Crack," and all the while we had movies like "Jingle All the Way," "A Year Without a Santa Claus," and even a blu-ray of Madison's recent "Nutcracker" performance.  Later on, we even saw that recent version of "A Christmas Carol," one Madison hasn't seen yet.  Even this time, Daddy pressed the chapter advance before watching the Spirit of Christmas Present disintegrate, thank you very much Robert Zemeckis.   Beside that scene, the movie is decent, and of course we just finished reading the actual unabridged version by Charles Dickens.  So finally Madison got to see this version - we were remembering our visit on a promotional train for the movie, way back in 2009.  Madison didn't remember that trip.  But she liked the movie, especially having just read the book together.  After the wait, it was a nice time together, snuggling and making the most of this recovery time and yucky weather.