Camels and Hot Chocolate

Maddie's been doing decently on her midterms, but apparently Rudolph hasn't fared as well.  How'd Rudolph's exams go?  He went down in history!

As for the rest of our day, it was pretty busy now, wasn't it?  Maddie started her day out over at Edge Martial Arts with a small training, but mostly for a fun party with games and gifts.  

She got a few things from her friends, plus a taekwondo ornament as well, and once the fun was over, she headed over to the church where Mom and I were in the midst of round one of a huge presentation of our Christmas Spectacular!  This year's production has been in such demand - there was a lady waiting when we arrived at the church this morning - she was prepared to wait four hours just to be sure to get in, as there was not enough space last night.  Many were turned away last night, as overflow as filled.  And that was the case again all day today for three consecutive performances.  The amount of traffic outside and the amount of people showing up were just overwhelming.  We were largely oblivious to the crowds, as we're downstairs preparing, running through lines, getting costumes on with make-up and so on.  I've got so much make-up on again, although it's not as uncomfortable as last year.  It's been fun walking around with the chalice in hand, one that conveniently fits a small coffee-sized drink in.  Mom has been super busy adjusting costumes, particularly for these aerialists, who have been a big challenge all week.  Here are a few photos from our staff of the first production...

Like I said, Maddie arrived right about now, and managed to get into the building (everyone knows her!).  She and Buc-ee spent much of the rest of the day in the choir room, hanging out with some of the other students involved in the production.  In between their performances, Maddie and the others were playing plenty of card games, keeping an eye on the big screens and watching that performance directly above them.

Oh, and in between the first and second production, Maddie went outside to meet Cottontop, Olympia and Tiny, the star sheep from our shepherding scene.

And there's Obediah the camel as well!  He's with the Wise Men, of course, and a big star of the production.  The audience cheers for the camel when it comes in.  Here's some pictures from the second and third productions, with audiences so huge.  The performances were really fantastic, with King Herod and his evil flame dancing minions, aerialists for various songs, trampolines, animals, and so many wonderful musical numbers.  Fun fact!  I'm helping sing at the end - it's an upbeat exciting song, but backstage, we're right there with the lead singers and I've been having so much fun singing along.  It's the end of the production, so I suppose there's a bit of joy in the knowledge that we've wrapped up another performance by that point.

Between performances, we were resting in my office a good bit.  I had plenty of Christmas VHS tapes playing throughout the day, different old ones that we don't have in any other form (mainly because they aren't that great!).  But that sort of set up the atmosphere, along with some delicious hot chocolate for free (from places like Farmhouse Coffee - they made Mom an absolutely amazing hot chocolate!).  So today, yes, we had camels and hot chocolate!

In the end, the crowds stood to their feet in applause.  It's such a satisfying moment.  Mom did all these costumes for the last production and this one, both back-to-back.  I wrote both of these, all the dialogue from both.  In fact, the idea of the Christmas story from Joseph's perspective was one God gave me some time ago, and when I suggested it back in the summer, I didn't realize we'd be here actually doing it.  But everyone liked it back then, and reading comments online, it sounds as if they certainly enjoyed it.  It's humbling seeing so many people coming.

We got home, and yeah we were pretty wiped out.  We managed to clean up - lots of make-up to remove in my case.  But we did a few things, including some time reading and praying of course.  And then we were all quickly asleep, as tomorrow is going to come super early.