...Christmas Eve 2024

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Godzilla, Texas Roadhouse, chiropractor, Hogfather... updates coming soon...

Last KidPak of 2024

We had another fun service today at KidPak, and it's crazy to think this, but today was actually the last KidPak service of 2024!  That being said, it was somewhat of a traditional service, with Christmas music and a Christmas game too - teams of kids were trying to unwrap a present as quickly as possible in a race against each other, with inflatable mascots cheering everyone on.  You can see me as a snowman up there. After all the excitement was done, it was time for the Christmas story, where Pastor Lance sits and reads the account from Luke 2 and Matthew 2, after which everyone gets a battery-powered candle to hold up for a special KidPak candlelight service.  It was a pleasant morning - Maddie had her candle, and so did Mom and I.  Maddie also had her camera, which she used to take pictures for this one last service of 2024:

As you can imagine, we had gift exchanges all around here or there, giving out presents and getting presents.  And there was a lot of Christmas caroling in the lobby too.  It was a nice morning at church.  We'll all see each other at the Christmas Eve service, but today was a little less busy than all that will be - there's a lot of folks there for those Christmas Eve services, quite packed.  Today was a little different down at KidPak, and it was nice too.

So there are only a few more days until Christmas, and we're actually a bit more prepared than usual.  Perhaps it was the lack of any large scaled Christmas production this year.  Regardless, after church, Maddie and I sat down to wrap a lot of Mom's presents, and Maddie was super helpful with that - we got about 95% done!  We did that while watching "Home Alone 3," which was actually a fun movie.  Nothing like the previous two, of course, and that disclaimer always has to be made.  As a stand-alone movie though, it's great.  We watched "Home Alone 4" this year, and that one was not good.  Nope.  

Oh, I'm sure you were wondering what Jingle Bell was up to.  Maddie and her class were watching "Forrest Gump" at school recently, and Maddie was talking about that movie again.  Apparently, Jingle Bell was listening in on that conversation too:

Jingle Bell and Snowflake had a box of chocolates and a Dr. Pepper there, plus some license plates and our Christmas shrimp that we've had with us for many, many Christmases.  We got that from Bubba Gump some time ago, somewhat of a souvenir after our honeymoon in Maui when we ate at that Bubba Bump location in Lahaina.  

Anyway, not many visits from Jingle Bell left.  Almost time for Santa to get here!  We checked on the Gävle Goat, and it seems to be doing just fine - no fires or birds this year.  Not yet, anyway.  And all the other traditions have been checked off, one by one.  We're almost there at Christmas!

The weather was cold outside today.  We've been hacking away at the ice in the bird bath, pouring a big kettle of freshly boiled water on it to melt the layers of ice there for the birds.  We keep the feeders well stocked, and we're getting more and more visitors on the back deck.  

Tonight we watched a new Christmas movie - to us, at least.  It was called "8-Bit Christmas," and the three of us really enjoyed it.  It had a elements of "A Christmas Story" or even "The Princess Bride" in it, and a huge amount of jokes that only 80's kids would get.  That being said, I was laughing out loud more than once!

Before bed tonight, I started reading another book out loud, this one to Mom and Maddie.  For Christmas this year, Mom got me a copy of "A Christmas Carol," a copy of the original cover and artwork inside.  It's a replica of the original book, and so I started to read that to the girls tonight.  We got a good ways in - I believe Jacob Marley is about to pay a visit.  The fun thing about reading this is that you already know so many of the words and phrases by heart.  

We continued with "Hogfather" after this, and then it was time for prayers, and a good night's rest.  No wake-up time tomorrow!  Everyone sleeps in, and that'll be just fine with Maddie!

Jingle Hockey

This was a nice surprise!  Maddie found Jingle Bell this morning on the ice rink with a candy cane hockey stick, because there beneath the tree were four tickets to an upcoming Gladiators game!  Yes, we're heading back next month, and we're going to go on Star Wars night again.  There's that extra ticket so that Maddie can invite a friend too.  You can see the teddy bear from Teddy Bear night a few years ago.

So we did some shopping today.  Maddie and I were out at various locations, and along the way we had to stop at this one:  Party City.  We learned this week that Party City is closing down, and that was quite a shocker.  The other store that's closing down in Big Lots, something else we learned this week too.  We got a few things from Big Lots back in the day, including the electric fireplace in the piano room.  This tumultuous economy and the rise of internet purchases have really killed off a lot of these places.  It was a melancholy visit to Party City, but the other locations we visited were fairly profitable on our end - theirs too, of course - with us getting a good deal of shopping done for Mom.  Along the way, we got some boba tea, of course!

Funny card we got from the Georgia Republican Party today.  We got back home and brought a rotisserie chicken home to Mom.  Tonight we watched a few things tonight, short specials like Phineas and Ferb's Christmas special, the original Grinch special, and the live action "Year Without a Santa Claus."  We're really getting down to the end of our Christmas collection.  It's impossible to see them all, of course, but we've seen most of the major ones.  We even watched the JibJab DVD of the three of us dancing around as elves, something we got over ten years ago.  Wow.

We got a few more Christmas cards in the mail, and that was nice.  And tonight, we closed down early - everyone was tired.  We read before bed, and we got the gang all tucked in.  Time for prayers, and some long winter's rest.

Magical Falling Yule Bread

Jingle Bell and Snowflake invited some friends to see some magical Christmas Yule Bread fall over just before the holidays.  Some may ask why?  But of course the answer to that is why not?  So, will this slice of bread fall?  Only time will tell as this merry group of friends gather with joyous wonder and anxious expectancy.  It was a time of merriment, as this slice of bread stands tall like a bacon of hope radiating joy and the spirit of Christmas like no other ordinary slice of bread can.  

 

Maddie did get a kick out of this.  I'm not entirely sure why there are so many videos of slices of bread falling over online, but there is something amusing about it that can't be really explained.  You just sit there and watch, and plop, it falls over.  And for some reason, that's funny!  

Anyway, Maddie had her last day of school in 2024 today, and it was another short one.  She had another test today, and she did well with all her tests this week.  It was an early release, so I was happy to go pick her up early.  I was reading and walking on the treadmill this morning.

While on the treadmill, I'm marching or jogging along and watching various Christmas specials and movies.  I was watching the old carton the Jetsons and their version of "A Christmas Carol," and then this masterpiece from 1994, "A Flintstones Christmas Carol."  I really did like this one, revisiting it all these years later.  The Jetsons was great too - I forgot how amazing that theme song is too!

Anyway, it was a chill day.  Mom is still recovering from the massive dental work just two days ago, in addition to all the work with the children's pageant yesterday.  I got all that stuff back in my office, and we'll deal with that later.  

In the meantime, tonight it was time for the Polar Express!  Mom made hot chocolate and we climbed on board the greatest train ride there is.  Still my favorite Christmas movie!  We sat together under the soft glow of the tree, sipping hot chocolate with marshmallows and candy canes, watching the train rush towards the North Pole.  

Maddie doesn't have to get up early tomorrow, so we read a little more tonight from "Hogfather" than we usually can.  The story is moving along now pretty well.  We've read this one before, but it's Christmas time and Maddie was in the mood to hear it again.  One of our favorite characters is Death.  Mainly because HE TALKS LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME.  

And after that, we said our prayers and got ready for sleep.  No worries about tomorrow though - we sleep in!

Butter Watch Out!

So we'll start out the day today with a bad pun!  Jingle Bell and Snowflake had three sticks of butter put out there, "Butter watch out!  Butter not cry!  Butter not pout!"  Maddie looked at us and did the rimshot noise she so often makes when doing bad puns.  

It was a fairly busy day today, but before we move on to that, here is an update on the Spider-man Advent Calendar.  It's filling up!

Each morning Maddie has been getting one item or another, and sometimes different characters too.  The Miles Morales Spider-man in a Christmas sweater is pretty fun.  

Tonight we had the Preschool Academy Christmas production, and you can see all the little angels above.  But to the right there's that chicken costume that Mom was still making last night.  The other costumes were coming in throughout the month as Mom was getting everyone sized up and dressed.  We had one Wise Man that we had to make a new costume for because he was so small - his feet kept tripping over his tunic.  Mom got that taken care of, got the Wise Men props, and got everything all ready and all the kids all dressed up tonight for the big production!  It was really nice, and it was written by our good friend Clint.  I think the one hiccup that happened was pretty funny - Mary forgot to bring up baby Jesus.  Fortunately, the manger was so tall, you couldn't tell if it was empty or not.  While one of the videos was playing overhead and everything was darker on stage, I handed Emma (who was playing a cow) the baby doll.  So yes, there was a cow bringing in Baby Jesus to the manger before the lights came back on.  But no one noticed that.  Everything went well, despite some last-minute costuming issues that were annoying, but all in all we got things well done tonight, and there was a lot of applause.  The kids did a wonderful job, and of course Mom was the behind-the-scenes hero once again.

Maddie had another midterm today, and I was able to pick her up early.  I picked her up early, and she spent a good bit of the day at home cleaning a little, mostly on video games.  She was glad to get out of school earlier today, of course.

Tonight we got home from the production, and we watched another new Christmas movie - we've been seeing a lot of new stuff this year - this one from a few years ago, "Christmas in Dollywood."  It was fun seeing the park, and of course Dolly there.  Now, of course, everyone wants to go back!

Anyway, we read tonight, and after that we said our prayers and got the whole crew tucked in.  It was a good day today!

Kylo Ren says "Hi"

Kylo Ren is apparently displeased with Jingle Bell, but at least he's got a festive hat on.  Oh wait - that's Jingle Bell's hat.  Hopefully he'll give it back.  The First Order was here this morning, which is normally not an ideal thing.  But they were only about a foot tall, so I think we'll be okay.

Today was a fun day at KidPak - the deadline for our our AI Christmas songs was last Sunday, and the official voting was tallied up today.  We had a total of 23 songs, including one by Maddie called "Jingle Bell Sabotage."  It's a fun song she had made to tell the story of what usually happens with the yearly Christmas gingerbread battles at KidPak.  It's a fun song!

We'll post other songs as we go along, but we had a fun time at lunch break listening to everyone's creations.  I think we started a new tradition!  It was super fun trying to guess who did which song - they were all placed anonymously on a single drive, and the first thing we did was try and deduce who did which one.  We filled out our votes afterwards, and announced our top ten.  Great fun!  Isaac announced that he would be giving us all a jewel-cased CD with all the songs on it, and that's pretty awesome - a nice souvenir of the season!

Tonight was FCY, and you can see this arial shot of Maddie with Chloe.  I was above them, where I sat for most of tonight's service.  I was there at the church because I was helping Dawn with a few props for tomorrow night's preschool performance.  So I stuck around, and I'm glad I did.  For one, it was the last FCY service of 2024.  But also, there was this:

Tonight was the last night for Pastor Hamilton at FCY, as he's going to be head pastor at Braselton's campus now.  We prayed for him and celebrated the four years he's been here at FCY.  And next, we saw a familiar face get introduced as a new FCY pastor - it was Pastor Tucker!

He'll be with us at FCY now, a welcome addition to the team.  It was a nice service, and a festive one too. Later, the afterparty next door was great as always, but this time there was some extra fun.  For one thing, there was pizza.  Also, there was BINGO.  Maddie won Bingo right away, and got herself first dibs on the prize- she got herself a set of headphones.  She also got a black dress that she really likes.  I was playing too, believe it or not, and I won a prize myself.  I went to the prizes, and actually got something nice for Mom - a birdhouse.  

It was a fun time.  We got home, and watched the latest episode of "Skelton Crew," which has been a fun show so far.  Today was a big day for Maddie with a midterm in her AP calculus class.  She was happy to have that out of the way for sure!

We read tonight, and after that, it was time for prayers, and sleep.  We had a good day.

Meet Timothy

 

It's a 2319!  It looks like George Sanderson is back to see Jingle Bell in full contact with a human sock!  Fun fact:  I just learned that 2319 stands for WS, the 23rd and 19th letters of the alphabet, which stand for "white sock."   

The CDA is probably on their way to our front room right now, so perhaps we'd better talk about something else...

Meet Timothy!  Maddie's latest ceramics project is absolutely awesome.  This came out so well, and we were honestly blown away by it when she brought it home to us  Carefully, Timothy was loaded up in the car - I picked her up at school, as she wanting to be careful and not taking a large ceramics project on the bus.  Timothy made it home in perfect condition!  But here's a few other projects done by Maddie's classmates!

Calcifer!  It looks like this class was a really enjoyable one for the students!  And once Timothy got home with us, he found a nice place over in the kitchen by the gingerbread house.

That's not the only thing that happened today for Maddie.  When she got home, we checked the mail and she got a letter from Free Chapel College - she was accepted.  Of course, this was somewhat of a given, but it's still pretty exciting nonetheless.  She's quite happy in her decision, as you can see clearly here.

The big thing for Mom today was a three-hour dental procedure this morning.  I was there with her to be there for her and get her home safely.  It was a somewhat uncomfortable feeling the remainder of the day, as she had a lot of stuff done in her mouth.  So we took it easy.

But one thing we did tonight was tour our neighborhood, because there's a contest to see who has the best lights.  They started this up last year, and now they're doing it again, and even the houses that aren't competing are looking super nice.  We plugged in some Christmas music, stayed in our pajamas, and drove the car around our own neighborhood.

This was our favorite, and it's not that far from where we are at all.  We love it because there are goats on a roof, which is just so brilliantly ridiculous.  Goats that light up?  On your roof?  And then there are the other farm animals and the whole farm vibe in the front yard.  We'll be voting for this one online.  But again, the entire neighborhood was just very nice.  It was lit up very nicely!

We closed the day reading "Hogfather," and then saying our prayers.  Mom and I were super tired, so we didn't stay awake too long after that!