You Have Died of Dysentery

We started the day off with a funny reference to "The Oregon Trail," as Jingle Bell and Snowflake were apparently playing a round or two of that game.  Jingle Bell apparently didn't make it.

Maddie did some of her advent activities this morning a little earlier, because I had to race down to Hebron Christian Academy once more to help out with a service that KidPak hosted there!

Fun morning!  Lots of kids came as we did the morning's chapel service together, and it was a fantastic Christmas themed service of course.  We continued "A Lone Star Christmas" at the school with a great message about PEACE.  It's what we're all chasing after, and should be working hard to create more of, especially this season.

Afterwards, it was time for the traditional trip to Waffle House, which as usual had no nutritional value whatsoever, but was a fun visit together as a Kidpak Team.  Maddie, meanwhile, is doing midterms.  She had a history midterm today, and her final grade in that class for the first semester is going to be a 98.  Great job!

She had taekwondo tonight, and I got her to that, and while she was having fun with students, she actually completed an aerial!  It's a trick she's been trying to do for some time, and fortunately her instructor Mrs. Hardin saw it, because Maddie always talks about doing some of these things and no one getting to see it.  But she was very excited about that tonight, as she should be.

She joined us over at the church after that, because tonight was the last night of TECH WEEK!  

You can see that Buc-ee was there to watch as we went through our show a few times.  We had our fire dancers, we had the camel, we had sheep and a donkey.  We had Wise Men, shepherds, Joseph and Mary.  We had aerialists too.  It's all coming together.  The music is wonderful!

Here's a shot of the crew we took between run-throughs.  Mom and I are over to the right at the front, and yes, I'm dressed as King Herod tonight.  I got that part, and it's been a lot of fun!

Here's Josh as Joseph, and he's doing so well as this.  Better than I even envisioned - he's really diving into the humility and "every man" of this character, an obedient servant of God chosen for such a time as this.

Ah!  The fire scene.  I'm King Herod, easier to spot on the screens at the moment - looking on as these fire dancers entertain the king's court.  The Wise Men are here to visit, summoned by the wicked king to go and search carefully for the child.

It was a good night, and we still have some clean-up to do, but we're moving along well.  There are headaches with costuming and last-minute changes and challenging aerialists who misplace costumes.  But overall, it's going well.

One more thing when getting home, amidst unpacking.  It was the last night of Hanukkah, and we let Maddie be the one to light the candle.  It's been a busy little season, but she's actually gotten a gift each day of Hanukkah, some small and some larger things to celebrate the holiday season.  It was nice to celebrate.

We'll get some rest tonight.  We read, and we prayed, and soon enough, we were all fast asleep!