The Night Before Christmas

Christmas time is here, and Madison was looking quite lovely in her special dress, getting ready for church this morning.  We had her pose in front of the tree, one that would shortly see gifts all around - at least that's the hope!

Christmas Eve service was nice at KidPak.  We're no longer up with the families in the main sanctuary for the candlelight service, so we have our own service downstairs.  You can see above one of our traditional games, where a boys team and a girls team decorate an adult volunteer as if they were a Christmas tree.  A sweater is put on, and ornaments and garland are draped and hung on that volunteer.  Whoever has the most decorations on at the end of a particular time is the winning team.  In the case above, it was the girls team.

The rest of the service is fairly simple:  we read from the book of Luke, Chapter 2, along with a bit from Matthew about the Wise Men.  Daddy prints out all of this together, and makes it just the right size to fit in the Bible, and read together.

Here's Pastor Lance and his daughter for their first Christmas together.  He's reading the Christmas story to the kids - and adults - who are there.  It's a nice moment being together, followed by our own little "light" service:

The kids all had those electric candles, which are safer and less messy.  Madison is in the picture above, to the right a row or two back.  It was a nice morning, one where we all wished one another a Merry Christmas, and soon we were out the door to our families.

At home, we prepared for Christmas Eve, bringing foods and presents to Aunt Shain's house.  Tonight, we had "A Christmas Story" playing, and we exchanged some white elephant gifts.  That's always a fun game:  Madison came home with an X-Box game with bumper cars, which is a funny little theme for the year, given her first bumper car rides back in October.

We had dinner, played Christmas music, and just sat back for a while, enjoying each other's company.  It's been a long trip to get to Christmas Eve, and it seems surreal that it's finally here.  But here it is, and it was a perfectly nice sort of day.

We got home, and of course there was plenty to do.  For one thing, we had to set out the cookies, milk - and the carrots for the reindeer.

Daddy read "The Night Before Christmas," and that was about it for reading tonight, as everyone was pretty tired.  It wasn't long before we all were asleep, visions of sugar plums dancing in our head.  NORAD was showing Santa zooming in our direction, so we all did our best to get in bed quickly.  And to all a goodnight!