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!