St. Nicolas Day

St. Nicolas Day is here, and although there was probably some commotion down the street, Krampus did not come visit our house.  Madison was excited to see that inside the boots she left by the fireplace was a whole lot of candy!  Madison got up earlier and just couldn't get back to sleep because she was so excited to see that she got something.  But she wasn't alone - Mommy found her slippers by the fireplace, and a little treasure inside them as well.

Mommy must have been good this year - it's an edible Scrabble game.  All chocolate!

Afterwards, it was another great morning at KidPak, where we continued "A Very Merry Tribes Christmas" with a great service about making room for Jesus.  Part two of our Tribes cartoon continued the story, where our heroes met a Mecha-Santa bent on pelting everyone with bursts of coal, inspiration courtesy of "The Santa Clause 2" and "Merry Madagascar."  The kids just loved it, and are really looking forward to the next two parts leading up to Christmas.

We got home, ate lunch, and though we had plans to do a few different things today, there was one thing we did pretty much, and here it is:

This in fact took longer to do than Paul Revere's actual midnight ride!  Madison wrote a five-paragraph essay on Paul Revere, and pretty much has everything you need to know about the man memorized.  She knows his horse, his friends, his birthday, his occupation, his history - a lot more than we knew about Paul Revere ourselves.  We got all those books from the library for research, and a few more in fact - including that Rush Revere book that she enjoyed quite a bit.  She wrote the paper on Friday, and we went through the revising and editing, and finalized it today.  Then, it was time to work on the creative bit, the poster board and the drawing part.  Mommy was enormously helpful here, though Daddy helped with the lettering up top and finding the pictures Madison needed.  It was very much a team effort, with Madison at the lead.  And it took quite a long time, but we all stuck with it until the end, quite satisfied with the end product.

We finished "Tom Sawyer" tonight, which was something Madison really liked a lot.  So much so that tomorrow night we'll be hitting "Huckleberry Finn" to see what happens next.  Daddy had forgotten all that happened in "Tom Sawyer," so it was a pleasure reading it himself, and Mommy was always nearby to hear it herself.  We last saw these two in "Big River," a few years ago, but Madison wasn't quite old enough to enjoy it yet.  She would today, that's for sure.

So anyway, it was a good day - although a pretty long one!  Mommy and Daddy started watching "The Bishop's Wife" tonight, but almost didn't make it through!  Not because it isn't a good movie - it is - but because we were so tired from the weekend's events.  It was a pretty full one, and it will keep getting more full as we get closer to Christmas.  'Tis the season - but it's a good one!