Christmas Time is Here

Another December morning here, and it looks like another gift from Santa Buc-ee!  Maddie raced down the stairs this morning, mostly because she was late, but she still managed to go through her routine of getting the latest Guardians of the Galaxy LEGO Advent object, and then heading downstairs to see what she got under the tree from Santa Buc-ee.  Of course, our Presidential elf is there, along with Jingle Bell and Snowflake.

Ah!  Hot sauce.  Not just any hot sauce, of course, but Buc-ee's hot sauce!  What else would Santa Buc-ee be bringing, right?  In fact, here's some of the items she's already received thus far:

We said our prayers and this morning we said them with Emma, who dropped by the house.  She was there to pick up Maddie so the the two of them could go out for coffee together before chapel.  Don't worry though:  Mom and I have plenty of coffee at the house.  Here are just two of the themed coffees we have to try out this month.

Okay, I love this flavor.  The almond smell and taste is just perfection.  But there are so many other flavors here too - we're trying them all one at a time, and there's not a bad one in the batch!

Delicious!  Mom and I picked up Maddie a little later on, and after that, the three of us had a mission at the church, picking up a few items and dropping others off in order to go to Braselton campus.  That was great, but of course while in Braselton, the latest rule is that we have to go to the Cracker Barrel there.

Maddie had this herb chicken that was delicious, and I had to get some chicken dumplings, because today was a cold and miserable sort of day that is perfect for chicken dumplings.  Mom got pot roast for exactly the same reason.  Maddie and Mom were quite happy with their special orders because they got the special plates!  My food was good too, of course.  We went and shopped around a bit afterwards, and Mom had some discounts and points saved up for some store credits - that's why when she saw a new cowboy hat, she got it.  It'll be great for the Christmas party.  She got a new sweater too, one with a reindeer on it.  Really nice!  Maddie got some candy which she was nice enough to share with Mom afterwards.

  

Here's Mom finding a tree skirt for our KidPak tree.  We got to the Braselton church of course and did our thing there, and then pretty much drove home right afterwards.  Although we did stop by to get some printed photos.  One of those printed photos was of Maddie and Santa - our official Santa picture was taken pretty early this year.  Try April 3rd!  Yeah, that was the earliest I think Maddie's ever posed with Santa.  Here's a quick snap of the new Christmas frame we got, and the new picture of Maddie with Santa for this year.

Of course, Maddie had to get ready for taekwondo tonight.  While she was preparing, Mom got me this absolutely amazing gift.  

It's a vinyl record of the soundtrack to the Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas special!  We listened that that one right away.  It's got that great opening song, and even the song with Kevin Bacon taking the lead.  The cover art and the album itself look amazing!

So tonight we were at taekwondo of course.  It's cold out there, the kind of day that takes forever to get your feet warm.  But slowly and surely, we'r swarming up.  Maddie's warming up quicker of course, by helping out with the little ones as they do their kicks.  One more taekwondo tomorrow... one more session as a second degree black belt.  And then it's time to move on to third degree testing.  Wow, so soon!

Tonight's movie was "Nativity!"  It's really good, a gem of a Christmas movie because I don't think enough people have seen it.  We enjoyed that one, and then of course we read from "Hogfather," where Nobby Nobbs finally meets the Hogfather, perhaps, and the God of Wine finally sees some consequences.  It's a fun book.  We said our prayers after that, and then it was time for some rest!

 

December Days

Another morning in December, and another gift from Santa Buc-ee.  Maddie starts out her December days like she has for over a decade now, first getting to a LEGO Advent calendar, and then finding Jingle Bell and Snowflake.  This year, they're hanging around Santa Buc-ee, and another elf that looks suspiciously like our current President...

Anyway, the gift she got today was a Buc-ee's Christmas scrunchie, which just might come in handy this holiday season. We'll see! 

Off to church!  We had another day of fun today at the office.  We got the skit done for Sunday and a lot of prep work for that out of the way.  Mom and I are on this detox thing though, and wow, this brain clear stuff is giving me a headache!  I managed to get a lot done towards this weekend, but tomorrow I have to focus on our first series of 2026.  It should be a ton of fun, but we have a tight deadline and have got to get going on it.  

We did get some decorating on the stage done, and we have a ginormous tree for the KidPak stage.  Like, it nearly touches the ceiling, it's so big.  We got that set up, and a few other things.  

And Mom has some new decorations set up at the house too.  The Christmas mugs are set up, the stockings are hung up, and Mom also hung up the wreathe we picked up from Bradley's Farm this past weekend.  

Tonight we boarded the Polar Express again, and had fun aboard that magical train.  Mom made us some hot chocolate, and it was delicious.  You always try to time it so you can drink that hot chocolate as the kids are drinking it on the train.  Anyway, the movie is now 21 years old, which is hard to fathom.  We enjoyed watching it as always, and then it was time to get some sleep.  We read from "Hogfather" a bit more, and then said our prayers.  And now it's time for a long winter's night.

Or a short one until that alarm goes off in the middle of the night so we can take that one detox pill.  Ugh!

Gingerbread Battle 2025

Another visit from Santa Buc-ee!  Or is it Buc-ee Claus?  Whatever you call him, there was another gift under the tree this morning, all wrapped up nicely in Buc-ee's wallpaper!   

What was the gift?  A Christmas-themed Buc-ee's coloring book, complete with a small Buc-ee's box of crayons.  It looks like we're in for an interesting month beneath the piano room's tree this month.

So today was a fun day for KidPak, the day of our famous annual Gingerbread Battle!

Emma's gingerbread house was literally hit by a chocolate meteorite!

Camille's house... well, there it is.  I think those are farm animals in an enclosure or something?

Amazingly, Joey's house did well this year!

Here are some shots before the carnage.  Houses are looking good so far.  But anything can happen!

Joey's house was going to be even better... until Camille slammed a giant lollipop onto it, completely collapsing it.  Fortunately, the main pieces stayed intact and he was able to rise again!

Isaac does trivia questions along the way, and the first answers get extra sweet prizes, such as more icing or perhaps the chance to rain down punishment on a rival builder.

Lots of camera work here to be edited after the fact.  We had a few cameras from Ansley, Bryce and Josh working around the table to interview participants and get the action shots.

These are super fun events we film for the online channel.  The basic idea is a limited amount of time to build a gingerbread house, but there are variables and extra challenges.  And some unexpected demolition!  It's always a crazy event. 

I was teaching a class today, and we had fun starting it out with a gift exchange, one of those things where people drew numbers and then faced off swapping with each other to get ornaments for their tree.  It was fun, and it was an illustration about humility too, so it worked out in the end.  Here were my notes that I sort of worked out, but of course we varied a bit.  I was happy with the Christmas theme to it.

1.     Gift exchange

2.     The first shall be last - it's all about service and humility.

3.     Last Supper (chronological Bible) Disciples were arguing, then Jesus washes feet.  HUMILITY.
John 13:1-17
Luke 22:24-30

4.     Ugly Christmas Sweater – a ridiculous thing to wear.  Some are too proud to wear it, but put on humility!

5.     Best Christmas Pageant Ever Trailer

A.     There are no small parts.

B.     So obsessed with perfect and their Christmas production that they missed out on the point of Christmas.  Pride in their performance vs. humility and love.

C.     Finding perfection in the church vs. finding lost souls.  How to find the balance?  Love is the answer.

E.     What is love?  Ask OLAF:  Putting others first.  SEE LUKE 22.

6.     Virtual Thanksgiving Track 

A.     Running Community:  Not about beating others.  Encouraging runners on the track.  

B.     Little girl at finish line cheering on me and other runners – I didn’t even know her!

C.     Large man trying to run yesterday.

7.     Nutcracker Illustration

A.     Parents watching only their kids on stage, not necessarily the prima donna, but the little kid in the back twirling their umbrella for a few minutes.  Their kid, doing their best in a small part.

B.    Your Heavenly Father is watching YOU, the one working in the back, doing your best in ministry.

C.     Zena – doing the costumes backstage.  YOU, working in children’s ministry.  Anyone working in love and doing the small parts to help the ministry.  God the Father is looking down on you. Focus on serving.  Focus on love.

Maddie had her classes today, at least elsewhere.  We picked up something at Zaxby's for her, and then she was gone over at Nate's the rest of the day.  We were at the office getting a lot done, including cleaning up the stage and prepping it for the new Christmas set.  We're also working on this weekend's new script and a few other things.

 

Tonight we saw "The Santa Claus 3" before bed, and of course we read from "Hogfather" a bit more.  We said our prayers, and it was off to sleep!

Santa Buc-ee is Coming to Town

 

It's December 1st, and it's the most wonderful time of year!  Santa Buc-ee showed up this morning under the tree with gifts for Mom, Maddie and me.  Check out that Buc-ee's nutcracker, our new nutcracker for our collection.  

Pretty fun!  It's going to be a fun month again, another December in the trenches!  The LEGO advent calendar continued this morning too, with Maddie getting a new Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas Advent Calendar.  This morning's first prize:  Star Lord!  We'll be following this one through the month to see what happens next.

It was another good day today, the start of a new month - a busy season for sure.  I still made time to finish up the Thanksgiving race today though!  I was walking outside this time - 48 degrees - right there on the college track with quite a few other people too.  I stuck with it, and got my race completed.

The medallion is on the way!  It was a fun little course, giving little opportunities to list "grateful moments" or discover new recipes and so on.  It's been fun.

Today Maddie was back at the college for a bit, and Mom and I were at the dentist for a farewell to our regular dentist who is retiring.  Mom has known him since the very beginning of his dentistry, a lifetime ago, going regularly ever since then.  He's been my dentist for over twenty years too, and now we're sort of in a little opportunity to see someone new.  We'll see how it goes!

Tonight we were watching "Santa Claus 2," a true Christmas gem.  Love this movie!  Afterwards, it was "Hogfather" before bedtime and prayers.  It is cold outside, and rainy too - not the best weather outside! Still, we have a neighbor's cat besieging us, wanting in our house, meowing left and right at the door.

Eventually - hopefully - the cat went on to its own home.  And we got under those heavy covers - it's chilly out there!  

Nutcracker

Tonight we were at the Nutcracker again, the version we saw exactly one year ago today at the Byers Theater in Sandy Springs.  We got these tickets some time ago, so that when we arrived at the theater we had no idea where we were sitting.  This was the first time we were actually sitting on the floor level, and we looked at our tickets and were actually surprised where they were - second row!  What?  

It was a magnificent production, just like last year.  We definitely like the seats in the balcony better, but regardless, this was nice.  It's easy to get swept away to this other world that Clara spends so much time in.  Even though we've seen the story time and time again, this production was simply magical and just sucked you in.  We highly enjoyed it!

It snows on the audience too!  You can see it still "snowing" a bit just after the curtain goes down on act one.  

There were so many unique nutcrackers for sale out there in the lobby too.  I was so tempted to get a new one, but fortunately Mom stopped me!  There's really no room for our nutcrackers anymore, as we have so many of them!  Still... we're adding a new one tomorrow, which of course you'll see soon enough!

Outside, the lights looked so nice.  Maddie was ready to go though.  Maybe we'll get to spend a little more time seeing the lights when we visit here in a few weeks for "The Wizard of Oz."

We left after that, and I suggested one word that made spirits bright:  SHAWARMA.  Yes, we got ourselves some holiday shawarma after this. 

We got some other food and drinks too, including this unusual carbonated beverage.  I've been sampling their imported sodas, and they're pretty good!  We also got some more baklava, which is really good there.  It was a nice little stop!

This morning we did the famous Nerdo skit with the turkey.  Man, we've had that turkey for twenty years or so!  This is the skit with all the terrible food jokes, "dad jokes" that just went on and on and on.  It's a fun skit, and the kids were laughing quite a bit this morning.

The rest of the morning was fantastic, with a great message and powerful worship too.  We're gearing up for the holiday season, and it's going to be a great time at KidPak!

This afternoon I was walking along on the treadmill for a bit, almost done with the ritual Thanksgiving trail.  And tonight, we watched a few Christmas episodes before bed.  It was a later night with the Nutcracker, but we squeezed in a few episodes.

Oh, and the GOAT!  That's right, the Gävle Goat is standing tall and proud in Sweden, and there's even a live cam this year where you can have that on the screen as you listen to Christmas music.  Nice!

Tonight we read some more from "Hogfather," moving forward with the story, and then after that, it was time for prayers.  We ended November very nicely, thank you very much.