Snow Nativity

This morning, Jingle Bell and Snowflake... began making snowflakes of their own!  These cut out snowflakes dangled above, some of them perhaps from the book Madison was given this morning, one that showed how to make paper snowflakes.  It's filled with patterns and ideas.  Still, the elf had a few other unique patterns he made, as you can see here from a closer inspection:

This is Porg, who is a new character we don't know much about.  Porg is from the upcoming Star Wars movie, the one that comes out in just a week - he's got his own snowflake.

Ah yes, and what snowfall would be complete without Kylo Ren?  Yes, we can all reminisce happily about that winter wonderland on the Starkiller base with this lovely Kylo Ren snowflake.

And yeah, you have to do a Baby Groot snowflake.  This is the year of Baby Groot, who must have been a pain in the neck to cut out.  But it came out pretty well.  Speaking of snow though, check out what we made outside this morning:

It's a Snow Nativity Set!  This snow was so good and so thick that even the next day we didn't have any problem at all rolling it up to make this snow sculpture.  It's pretty simplistic, of course, with the baby Jesus in a snow sled.  And Joseph's staff is just another stick.  But it was sweet in sentiment, and idea that Mommy came up with.  We layered up and headed outside, of course throwing a lot of snowballs along the way.  These packed up so easily though, it was like throwing rocks.  Or, at least it was like Madison was throwing rocks at Daddy!

After a brief time of play, it was time to head in to the church and get things set up for the big production.  Mommy had the costumes ready for the younger kids, and all kinds of other props.  But our work with the production was done once it started, so we decided to do something we hardly ever get to do:

We watched it from the audience perspective.  The three of us sat together to watch the first "Christmas in Color" production, and it turned out well.  It's always a satisfying feeling hearing so many people laugh at a joke Daddy wrote, and in this case there were several bits that we came up with.  Mommy made some of the props for the hosts' portions, and everything came out really well.  We wrote the pieces in between, tying the songs to a theme of "Christmas in Color."  Lance and Josh did really well with the written material, getting laughs in the right places, and communicating our "bottom line" in a fun way.  There was a lot of positive reaction to our first production!

I can imagine there were issues here or there, but it was nothing huge.  In the Nativity scene with kids, one of the little sheep decided that he really, really had to go use the restroom right then, and so he ran off the front of the stage and down the aisle while singers were doing this new and unique version of "Silent Night."  The music was lost a moment as everyone was watching this panicking kid, laughing at "Little Go Peep."  That sort of thing is expected with the kids - you just never know what'll happen!

But on the whole, it was an enjoyable experience.  We were given a task of tying together a bunch of random Christmas songs with some dialogue that somehow had something to do with the title, "Christmas in Color."  I think we pulled it off well.

Anyway, we went home after that, slightly concerned about the roads refreezing.  Our neighborhood in particular had ice still on the roads, although Hall County had significantly less snow.  Still, with the temperatures dropping so low, there was still a bit to be cautious about on the way home.

We have a big day tomorrow.  We still made time to watch "Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas" and "Olive the Other Reindeer" tonight, the latter watched because Josh hadn't seen it yet.  He lives so far up north that we let him spend the night here close by - it's safer.  Not only was it safer, but he also has to be at the church a lot earlier tomorrow morning with a big production.

We read a few books tonight, including one with Gingerbread Pirates, and of course our devotional for the month, and then we said our prayers.  There's a lot going on, but it's been fun!