Living Tree Christmas

What?  Santa Buc-ee has two gifts this morning?  Yes, Maddie must have been extra good!  I wonder what's inside those presents?

Okay, Buc-ee's chapstick sounds kind of useful today.  The temperature started out at forty degrees, and it plunged after that to the teens, and the windchill made it feel worse of course.  Yikes!  The larger gift? 

That was an axolotl Santa hat!  Yes, they make those.  Mom and I saw that at the aquarium yesterday and knew that Maddie would like it.  She wore that today, in fact!  Maddie quickly opened up her gifts this morning, but after that it was straight to our busy day's events.  We started out at KidPak - you can see just a few of the pictures she took of service below:

It was a good day - a busy day too!  The kids were upstairs at the main sanctuary performing in the kids choir for the adults.  It was really special up there.  And we had a great time downstairs as well, a really solid morning at church.

After that, it was time to grab a bite to eat.  We went over to Mellow Mushroom to get some pizza!  It was good to see the place all nicely decorated too.

There's that new axolotl hat on Maddie!

So after that, we were off to the First Baptist Church to see their Living Christmas Tree.  It was time for a Living Tree Christmas!  This was one of the Suno Christmas songs that's been in our head all day, an intentionally goofy one that I made up:

That temperature was dropping so fast outside!  We met with Nana, Ye-Ye, Aunt Shain, David and Hannah at the front door, and then went in to find our seats.  

It's a nice event, and this is the twenty-fourth year they've been doing it.  I think we've been seeing it on-and-off since the beginning.  We even have a recording of one of their performances on CD.  We were sitting in the front row of the balcony there, and that was just fine for viewing.  The lights do their thing, and the choir - about 83 or so voices, plus the kids choir - performs song after song.  There's the Gainesville Symphony Orchestra there too, just adding so much to the whole thing.  I enjoyed this year's selection more than last, as there were some nice obscure traditional Christmas songs in the mix that you don't hear too often.   

The Wise Men song "Star of Wonder" is always a great one that seems to stay with the production year after year.  The song "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming" was done without instrumentation, just all those voices, and it was beautiful.  

And then it's just awesome to hear the voices and orchestra perform the "Hallelujah Chorus" at the end.  Everyone rises as is tradition, and it's just a thrilling sort of thing to hear and see in person, if done well.  It was a nice performance!   

So afterwards, we dropped off Nate at his place, although we did drive about the neighborhood looking at some of the lights.  All these neighborhoods are looking really nice right now, so many fun lights all over the houses.

We got home, and there's another holiday to celebrate as well.  Today is the start of Hanukkah!

We did our reading, a small devotional and explanation of what Hanukkah is all about, the history and miracle of the oil.  We said the blessings as we lit the first candle, the Shamash, and read from a verse in Deuteronomy as we lit the first candle for the first night of Hanukkah.  

There were a few Christmas movies on the television tonight, including "Babes in Toyland" from 1934.  This was a Laurel and Hardy movie I've seen so many times.  Remember back in March when we visited the Laurel and Hardy museum?  I can't believe it's taken me this long to sit down and watch one of their movies after that visit, but here we are.  I got another one of their movies, one I'll probably watch on the treadmill later on.  Anyway, we saw that tonight, and another one too - yes, it was a double feature tonight.  We saw that new "A Christmas Story Christmas," where Ralphie is all grown up and returning home.  It's such a sweet, sentimental Christmas story, with all these characters like family. 

Anyway, it's cold outside.  Bitter cold with the faucet dripping here.  We read tonight before bed and said our prayers.  Things slow down a little tomorrow - it's been a busy weekend, but a festive and fun one!

Scuba Claus

Santa Buc-ee was here this morning with another great little present for Maddie, all part of that 25 Days of Buc-ee's!  I wonder what it was...

Ah, nail clippers!  I think it might be more than that, but these things are pretty solid.  This has been a fun month in the mornings.  Maddie's been knocking out LEGO Guardians items each morning, and then unwrapping her surprise from Santa Buc-ee.

Today we got up a little earlier to go on a little trip!  Check out our destination!

Yes, this is the legendary Scuba Claus!  You can see he's letting us know everything's going to be perfect this holiday season!  Finally - finally - I got to see Scuba Claus.  We went to the Georgia Aquarium for the third and final time this year, getting our money's worth from this season ticket thing.  The first time we went this year was on February 14th, a Valentine's Day at the Aquarium.  It was absolutely packed with people, but we still had a good time.  The next time we went was back in August, when we also went to the Coke Museum.  This time, I wanted to go down for Christmas - and that's been about twenty years in the making.  I just wanted to see things decorated and see Scuba Claus.  I know that sounds goofy, but each time December came around, we just couldn't make our way to the aquarium, and thus another year without seeing Scuba Claus went by, and the legend grew!

But first, some light music.  We arrived at the aquarium with no worries, and got in easily.  There were a good number of people there, but nothing like back in February.  We had room to move around, and look who we ran into, also enjoying the music!

There were characters walking around like this dolphin here, and you'll see more of them in a bit.  But for now, the big one we were wanting to see was Scuba Claus.  We asked Alexander who was in the lobby, who sent us to ask Lacy at the photographer, who sent us to an info desk that had no answers.  No one knew if or when Scuba Claus would arrive!

Mom and I were there at the Ocean Voyager tank, the ginormous one with all the big fish and mantas, and we just sat there for a while watching the fish go by.  

One fish was hilarious, this big guy just sitting there staring everyone down.  That's when I noticed through the murky depths that there were divers off in the distance, maybe over the tunnel area perhaps, and certainly going along the sides and heading this way.  Yes, it was him!  

It must be Scuba Claus!  

He had two elves with him, also scuba diving along and waiving hi to all good girls and boys!

So my day was already made by this point, obviously.  We go to see Scuba Claus, and that was quite a thrill.  Next, we wandered out into the lobby and saw a few characters more, including this hula hoop artist...

And we posed under the great big Christmas tree.  The decorations in the aquarium were very nice, with quite a few trees in the lobby area, all lit up very nicely.

So the next thing we did was a really nice show.  Look at the snow!  It was a the last part of the show, the snow coming down overhead, just making things magical!

We made reservations for both the sea lion and dolphin show today, the first being the dolphin show.  It's called "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," and it was much better than what we saw earlier, a lot of Christmas music and projected snowflakes - and real snowflakes too.  The dolphins were jumping, and there were all kinds of amazing tricks and movements, and a lot of heavy splashing!

 

We posed with some more characters after this, just walking through the lobby area here.  Ah, there's the otter we posed with back in August.  And below, Mom is posing in front of the viewpoint for the lobby.  You and see all the lights and visitors below.

We went to grab a bite to eat after this - no octopus, sorry!  Mom and I sat by the window and had some fries and a drink, just something to snack on before we went home.  We were killing a little time before the sea lion show, so we posed with this guy...

 

And then we went to the cold water area.  You can see the beluga whales here, I think about five of them just dancing through the water.

We spent a tiny set of time with the penguins here.  You can see the guy in the foreground, looking for twigs and whatnot to bring back to his honey.  And then... it was time for the sea lion show!

We got to the sea lion show, and everything was decorated for Christmas there, and it's a nice smaller theater area where you get to see these wonderful sea lions up close.  Really fun show!

And right next door, we visited the shark tank again to say hello to these massive hammerheads and other sharks.  It's quite the aquarium exhibit!  

We left through the gift shop, and picked up a little something for Maddie - and that's when we got home.  Maddie did something tonight, making gingerbread houses over at Nate's house.  

They all were making gingerbread houses, and they all came out well!

So Maddie was making a car for the driveway, and someone said it looked more like a cannon.  So Maddie went with that, built another "cannon," and had some ginger bits on the ground nearby, as if the cannon blasted a house to tiny pieces!

Everyone had a good day.  We were watching the Jim Carrey "A Christmas Carol" tonight, reminiscing about that visit to the movie promotion train so many years ago.  We've decided to watch a few more versions of "A Christmas Carol" before we get to the twenty-fifth.  

We closed out the day with reading from "Hogfather," of course, moving along there.  And after that, prayers.  Time to get some sleep though.  It's been a busy and long day - and a fun one.  Time to drift off to sleep!