Magical Falling Yule Bread

Jingle Bell and Snowflake invited some friends to see some magical Christmas Yule Bread fall over just before the holidays.  Some may ask why?  But of course the answer to that is why not?  So, will this slice of bread fall?  Only time will tell as this merry group of friends gather with joyous wonder and anxious expectancy.  It was a time of merriment, as this slice of bread stands tall like a bacon of hope radiating joy and the spirit of Christmas like no other ordinary slice of bread can.  

 

Maddie did get a kick out of this.  I'm not entirely sure why there are so many videos of slices of bread falling over online, but there is something amusing about it that can't be really explained.  You just sit there and watch, and plop, it falls over.  And for some reason, that's funny!  

Anyway, Maddie had her last day of school in 2024 today, and it was another short one.  She had another test today, and she did well with all her tests this week.  It was an early release, so I was happy to go pick her up early.  I was reading and walking on the treadmill this morning.

While on the treadmill, I'm marching or jogging along and watching various Christmas specials and movies.  I was watching the old carton the Jetsons and their version of "A Christmas Carol," and then this masterpiece from 1994, "A Flintstones Christmas Carol."  I really did like this one, revisiting it all these years later.  The Jetsons was great too - I forgot how amazing that theme song is too!

Anyway, it was a chill day.  Mom is still recovering from the massive dental work just two days ago, in addition to all the work with the children's pageant yesterday.  I got all that stuff back in my office, and we'll deal with that later.  

In the meantime, tonight it was time for the Polar Express!  Mom made hot chocolate and we climbed on board the greatest train ride there is.  Still my favorite Christmas movie!  We sat together under the soft glow of the tree, sipping hot chocolate with marshmallows and candy canes, watching the train rush towards the North Pole.  

Maddie doesn't have to get up early tomorrow, so we read a little more tonight from "Hogfather" than we usually can.  The story is moving along now pretty well.  We've read this one before, but it's Christmas time and Maddie was in the mood to hear it again.  One of our favorite characters is Death.  Mainly because HE TALKS LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME.  

And after that, we said our prayers and got ready for sleep.  No worries about tomorrow though - we sleep in!

Butter Watch Out!

So we'll start out the day today with a bad pun!  Jingle Bell and Snowflake had three sticks of butter put out there, "Butter watch out!  Butter not cry!  Butter not pout!"  Maddie looked at us and did the rimshot noise she so often makes when doing bad puns.  

It was a fairly busy day today, but before we move on to that, here is an update on the Spider-man Advent Calendar.  It's filling up!

Each morning Maddie has been getting one item or another, and sometimes different characters too.  The Miles Morales Spider-man in a Christmas sweater is pretty fun.  

Tonight we had the Preschool Academy Christmas production, and you can see all the little angels above.  But to the right there's that chicken costume that Mom was still making last night.  The other costumes were coming in throughout the month as Mom was getting everyone sized up and dressed.  We had one Wise Man that we had to make a new costume for because he was so small - his feet kept tripping over his tunic.  Mom got that taken care of, got the Wise Men props, and got everything all ready and all the kids all dressed up tonight for the big production!  It was really nice, and it was written by our good friend Clint.  I think the one hiccup that happened was pretty funny - Mary forgot to bring up baby Jesus.  Fortunately, the manger was so tall, you couldn't tell if it was empty or not.  While one of the videos was playing overhead and everything was darker on stage, I handed Emma (who was playing a cow) the baby doll.  So yes, there was a cow bringing in Baby Jesus to the manger before the lights came back on.  But no one noticed that.  Everything went well, despite some last-minute costuming issues that were annoying, but all in all we got things well done tonight, and there was a lot of applause.  The kids did a wonderful job, and of course Mom was the behind-the-scenes hero once again.

Maddie had another midterm today, and I was able to pick her up early.  I picked her up early, and she spent a good bit of the day at home cleaning a little, mostly on video games.  She was glad to get out of school earlier today, of course.

Tonight we got home from the production, and we watched another new Christmas movie - we've been seeing a lot of new stuff this year - this one from a few years ago, "Christmas in Dollywood."  It was fun seeing the park, and of course Dolly there.  Now, of course, everyone wants to go back!

Anyway, we read tonight, and after that we said our prayers and got the whole crew tucked in.  It was a good day today!

Kylo Ren says "Hi"

Kylo Ren is apparently displeased with Jingle Bell, but at least he's got a festive hat on.  Oh wait - that's Jingle Bell's hat.  Hopefully he'll give it back.  The First Order was here this morning, which is normally not an ideal thing.  But they were only about a foot tall, so I think we'll be okay.

Today was a fun day at KidPak - the deadline for our our AI Christmas songs was last Sunday, and the official voting was tallied up today.  We had a total of 23 songs, including one by Maddie called "Jingle Bell Sabotage."  It's a fun song she had made to tell the story of what usually happens with the yearly Christmas gingerbread battles at KidPak.  It's a fun song!

We'll post other songs as we go along, but we had a fun time at lunch break listening to everyone's creations.  I think we started a new tradition!  It was super fun trying to guess who did which song - they were all placed anonymously on a single drive, and the first thing we did was try and deduce who did which one.  We filled out our votes afterwards, and announced our top ten.  Great fun!  Isaac announced that he would be giving us all a jewel-cased CD with all the songs on it, and that's pretty awesome - a nice souvenir of the season!

Tonight was FCY, and you can see this arial shot of Maddie with Chloe.  I was above them, where I sat for most of tonight's service.  I was there at the church because I was helping Dawn with a few props for tomorrow night's preschool performance.  So I stuck around, and I'm glad I did.  For one, it was the last FCY service of 2024.  But also, there was this:

Tonight was the last night for Pastor Hamilton at FCY, as he's going to be head pastor at Braselton's campus now.  We prayed for him and celebrated the four years he's been here at FCY.  And next, we saw a familiar face get introduced as a new FCY pastor - it was Pastor Tucker!

He'll be with us at FCY now, a welcome addition to the team.  It was a nice service, and a festive one too. Later, the afterparty next door was great as always, but this time there was some extra fun.  For one thing, there was pizza.  Also, there was BINGO.  Maddie won Bingo right away, and got herself first dibs on the prize- she got herself a set of headphones.  She also got a black dress that she really likes.  I was playing too, believe it or not, and I won a prize myself.  I went to the prizes, and actually got something nice for Mom - a birdhouse.  

It was a fun time.  We got home, and watched the latest episode of "Skelton Crew," which has been a fun show so far.  Today was a big day for Maddie with a midterm in her AP calculus class.  She was happy to have that out of the way for sure!

We read tonight, and after that, it was time for prayers, and sleep.  We had a good day.

Meet Timothy

 

It's a 2319!  It looks like George Sanderson is back to see Jingle Bell in full contact with a human sock!  Fun fact:  I just learned that 2319 stands for WS, the 23rd and 19th letters of the alphabet, which stand for "white sock."   

The CDA is probably on their way to our front room right now, so perhaps we'd better talk about something else...

Meet Timothy!  Maddie's latest ceramics project is absolutely awesome.  This came out so well, and we were honestly blown away by it when she brought it home to us  Carefully, Timothy was loaded up in the car - I picked her up at school, as she wanting to be careful and not taking a large ceramics project on the bus.  Timothy made it home in perfect condition!  But here's a few other projects done by Maddie's classmates!

Calcifer!  It looks like this class was a really enjoyable one for the students!  And once Timothy got home with us, he found a nice place over in the kitchen by the gingerbread house.

That's not the only thing that happened today for Maddie.  When she got home, we checked the mail and she got a letter from Free Chapel College - she was accepted.  Of course, this was somewhat of a given, but it's still pretty exciting nonetheless.  She's quite happy in her decision, as you can see clearly here.

The big thing for Mom today was a three-hour dental procedure this morning.  I was there with her to be there for her and get her home safely.  It was a somewhat uncomfortable feeling the remainder of the day, as she had a lot of stuff done in her mouth.  So we took it easy.

But one thing we did tonight was tour our neighborhood, because there's a contest to see who has the best lights.  They started this up last year, and now they're doing it again, and even the houses that aren't competing are looking super nice.  We plugged in some Christmas music, stayed in our pajamas, and drove the car around our own neighborhood.

This was our favorite, and it's not that far from where we are at all.  We love it because there are goats on a roof, which is just so brilliantly ridiculous.  Goats that light up?  On your roof?  And then there are the other farm animals and the whole farm vibe in the front yard.  We'll be voting for this one online.  But again, the entire neighborhood was just very nice.  It was lit up very nicely!

We closed the day reading "Hogfather," and then saying our prayers.  Mom and I were super tired, so we didn't stay awake too long after that!

Lucy the Christmas Chicken

This morning, Maddie discovered that Jingle Bell had gotten a hold of her polaroid camera, setting up a shot of Snowflake on the Christmas tree.  Maddie now had a polaroid photo of Snowflake to add to her collection, but something tells me she'll be getting more film soon enough.  Meanwhile, she's also gotten a new ornament this morning, one of a polaroid camera.  We've gotten it on the tree already!

Today was a quiet day with wrapping and Christmas movies and eating too many cookies, probably.  Maddie had her studies for her calculus class, but she also had another full taekwondo class this evening.  She was there for a good bit while I was out grocery shopping, picking up some sugar cookies for her to give out in class tomorrow, plus a lot of other groceries that we just needed to catch up on.

The weather is cool, and everything is soaked out there.  We managed to get back on track in a few areas, but it's such a busy season with other things that need to get done.  Fortunately, we were able to stay home.  Not so much tomorrow.  But tonight, Mom was working on a costume for the children's play upcoming.  That'll be Thursday.  Mom was making a chicken costume.  Little known fact:  chickens were at the Nativity.  There's a lost verse of the Friendly Beasts" song that goes something like this:

'Bawk,' goes the chicken, quiet and slow

I brought my feathers for a pillow

I also have eggs, which might seem stranger

for the parents of the child, placed in a manger.

Over time, the donkey, cows, and sheep overshadowed the presence of chicken.  Alas, you probably don't even see any chickens in your standard Nativity set!  That's why we're putting a chicken in there, to remind everyone of Lucy the Christmas Chicken!

Mom's making this costume tonight, because surprisingly, there aren't really that many chicken costumes around right now.  I mean, there's the standard super creepy bright yellow one that was made decades ago and for some reason everyone thinks it's a chicken.  But that probably won't fit in with the cows, donkey, sheep and doves.  Yes, there are doves in there too.  That's another costume question mark.  But the chicken is a funny one.  Mom has a plan, and it should work.  I'll take photos later.

In the meantime, let's get some sleep.  Tonight we read of course, and we also said our prayers.  We have an early morning tomorrow for Mom, who has a big dental procedure.  Plus some more large planning events at KidPak - big day tomorrow!

Ugly Christmas Sweaters

This morning was Ugly Sweater Day at KidPak, where volunteers were getting all festive with their ugly Christmas sweaters for a fun morning at church.  We had a great memory verse game, and this other game where we were decorating our own Christmas sweaters, and that was super fun.  It was a nice morning over all, and as always, Maddie was snapping pics.  We'll share a few here:

After church there was a brief practice for primary characters in our preschool play upcoming.  Mom is getting costumes all together for the little ones, but also the big ones too!

We left that soon afterwards, and got ourselves a traditional Christmas treat:  Chinese food.  We picked some up for home, and had a nice meal at home together afterwards.  

Speaking of "home," someone's got a sense of humor at the house...

We had a few moments this afternoon to sit and play some LEGO Marvel games, but it was also the deadline for our office AI Christmas song generator contest.  We've been making up some here or there along the way - there's about six of us, and we have them all in one folder and no one knows who did which one.  We'll vote on them all and have a winner by the end of the week, I think.  But we had fun listening to them.

A nice surprise was our neighbors across the street blessing us with a big tin filled with cookies and baked goods, wishing us a Merry Christmas!  That was super nice.

Later on, it was time to get Maddie over to the Christmas party at FCY!

This was an event for the girls!  Maddie had a really nice time making gingerbread houses and decorating cookies too.  There were contests, and although she didn't win tonight, she still had a really nice time spending the night with friends.

Maddie made a Snowman and a Santa

It was a really nice night for her.  Mom and I were watching a livestream of the Living Christmas Tree at Green Street again, and that was really good too.  We'll get there to see it in person again soon, but tonight's schedule was a little weird, plus the rain, plus we were just a little tired.  That's okay - we saw it on the television in our living room and it was a nice presentation!

After getting Maddie home, we watched "The Year Without a Santa Claus," hitting those old Rankin/Bass Christmas specials this season with a lot of energy.  The Miser Brothers are must-see each season!

We closed out the day reading from "Hogfather" some more, and then saying our prayers before getting that Plush Entourage tucked in and ready for some sleep.  The rain is coming down outside, just as it did all day.  It's time to get under those warm blankets and get some sleep!