A Festive Sort of Day

Rapunz-elf!  Rapunz-elf!  Let down your hair!  Jingle Bell was having a little fun with the tower from "Tangled," with a pretty long bit of braided hair involved as well!

This week, we were enormously blessed with a pretty remarkable donation of stuff to Madison - and a little bit to Daddy too, actually.  It was a bunch of Disney Store stuff, and it was all in great condition too.  One thing was this tower, which has action figures and note pads inside.  There's more on the way, including an amazing Snow White dress that we know she will just adore.  That's not from Santa - that's from us.  Well, it's from God really, along with a bunch of other unexpected blessings.  Our family and another one was highly blessed with enough toys to make any kid happy.  Madison is going to have an incredible Christmas!

We had KidPak this morning, but Mommy and Daddy were able to slip away to join the grown-ups in 'big people church' for the second service.  It was a really nice service with a Christmas theme, and a message about Simeon waiting for the baby Jesus.  But the other part of the service was great too - we got to see Mac Powell do a few of the Christmas songs and more.

He's been here about six times at the church, but we're usually at KidPak.  He usually poses for pictures with folks after service, and we may do that next year.  But this year, we were on a bit of a mission:  food, and then a show.

First the food.  We left church, and did a bit of shopping, getting a few items for the nephews and Hannah - and then we went to Texas Roadhouse for a fantastic lunch.  They have a new wing to the restaurant open there, and the place is always full of people.  It's a great steak they serve there, and the atmosphere is fun too.  Madison loves eating there, and Mommy does too.

Afterwards, we met up with the director of the 1st Baptist Church Christmas program this year, and he gave us some tickets to their Living Christmas Tree program at 4:30.  This is their fifteenth year of doing this production.

It was really good to see again, a choir of 101 people singing some obscure Christmas songs along with classic ones we all know and love.  There was an orchestra playing along with the choir, complete with a harpist, a marimba and even a couple steel drums.  The whole thing ends with the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah, with everyone standing up, and that's always a great thing to hear in person.  It's one of those things that sort of gets overplayed as a joke piece whenever good news happens (or whenever you use a hand grenade in a "Worms" game).  But this piece of music is really amazing, and wonderful to listen to.

We all enjoyed it tremendously, as we do each year.  And as we do each year, we drove a little slowly down Green Street to see all the houses in downtown Gainesville all decorated and brightly lit with hundreds of christmas lights, house after house, decorated in such stately fashions.

Mommy had one more surprise up her sleeve - a coupon for a free Blizzard at Dairy Queen.  The flavor of the month, appropriately enough, involves candy canes.  So we got one with just candy canes, and one with candy canes and Oreo bits.  Both were yummy!

We got home, and it was pretty much time for bed.  We wanted to get to sleep earlier, as it has been a big weekend.  Daddy started a new book, "Swiss Family Robinson," which might not be as exciting as the movie was.  So far, it just involves surviving the shipwreck, and building a home in a tree, and that sort of thing.  We'll read through this one next though, and just keep on reading as the weeks go by.  It's a great bedtime tradition!