Christmas Day

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve we baked cookies for Santa and attended the beautiful Christmas Eve service at our church. The service featured a full orchestra and choir and was just beautiful. It was packed, too. And this was just the 5 p.m. service. (There were also 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. services.) I think all the parents with young children came to this service so they could get the kiddies in bed early!

I picked up Chinese take-out on the way home. And after dinner the children opened one present each, their Christmas PJs. Before bed, Mikel read the Christmas story to them from our Bible, as well as The Night Before Christmas book. Hope they didn't get too confused.

Here are some pics from the evening, including one of the kids counting the number of cookies they'd put out for Santa.

Trimming The Tree

10 minutes until Christmas to get these photos up of the children trimming the tree! ... Merry Christmas to all my family and friends who read this blog!

A Crafty Christmas

As I mentioned before, we've been doing a lot of craft projects (which the children found in their Advent bags) during the holidays. Some of the things have included painting and glittering and coloring pictures for our mobile that hangs above our table; making jingle bell Rudolph necklaces; lacing beads for a candy cane necklace; painting two ceramic ornaments each (snowflake, snowman, Santa and reindeer); glittering wooden Christmas-tree-shaped ornaments in which we later inserted their photo; making foam door hangers; the gingerbread house.

Sounds Of Christmas

Last night the choir I sing with performed its annual Christmas concert. After missing the fall rehearsals and performance due to being overcommitted with substitute teaching and everything that went along with that, I rejoined the group just for the Christmas concert for nostalgic reasons. I miss being able to perform the full Handel's Messiah like I did with the Syracuse University Oratorio Society and also the group in Lake Charles for several years. And also because if Christmas music doesn't put you in the spirit what will?

In a way I also felt like I was giving back a little. We had two performances (4 p.m. and 7 p.m.), and despite temperatures being in the negatives we had a standing-room only crowd at both! I saw a more mature woman sitting in the front row at the second performance holding her husband's hand and just enjoying the music with her eyes closed at times.

I think my favorite Christmas carol is Oh Come All Ye Faithful, and here is a tiny clip of it that Mikel took. (I'm on the end of the top row, in case you're wondering). Most of the pieces were special music we'd been practicing for a couple months, but of course we had a few standard sing-alongs such as this.

The children and Mikel attended the first performance and actually had to sit along a windowsill during the first half because it was so crowded. The kids behaved beautifully. It's amazing what a totebag full of crayons, coloring books and picture books will do for ya! Not that they didn't listen and fully appreciate the sounds of Christmas or anything....

School Christmas

For this year's Christmas presents to their five teachers, Anna and Alexander made ornaments. They are so cool. I came across the idea on some other mom's blog and I totally stole it and put the craft project in one of their Advent bags.

I purchased clear glass ornaments and several bottles of pretty-colored metallic acrylic paint. In a nutshell, you swish a little rubbing alcohol inside each ornament and let that dry. Then you gently squirt your desired colors into the ornaments and let the color run down the side to the bottom. Then you can turn the ornament around and let it sit in various positions until you get your desired effect. It was really quite easy. You have to drain out the excess paint and let it dry. Then I wrote the teacher's name and 2008 with a gold metallic pen around the outside. Then I replaced the top and tied a pretty ribbon for hanging. And, of course, they had to be placed in a cute little box.

I also stayed up until the wee hours of the morning making yum toffee and packaging up that goodie in cute little Chinese-style take-out Christmas boxes. It's all about the presentation! The children also painted their own Christmas cards and wrote their names inside.

Today was their last day of school until the new year. Of my two, Anna only attends on Fridays, and she got to ride the little school bus with her friends from the Montessori school to a nursing home, where they sang Christmas songs for the residents. As observers, Alexander and I attended. But, of course, Alexander eventually got up there and sang along with his friends, too. Anna is standing behind Alexander in the group shot.

I'm trying to upload a little video, but I'm not having much luck. I'll keep trying to add it. But for now, here are photos.

P.S. When they go back to school in January, Alexander will join Anna in going to school five days. You may remember we'd tried to get him in five days before school even started in the fall but were discouraged by the school because he was only 3. Generally, 3-year-olds don't go five days for various reasons. But it seems they had an opening come up for the semester starting in January, and since Alexander has proven himself to be a good worker and well adjusted to school they asked if we were still interested in him being a five-day student.

It will cost more, of course, but I think he'll benefit because the five-day kids get a lot more academic things accomplished on the Mondays and Fridays when there are fewer children around. (Alexander currently attends Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.) It really is a good kindergarten prep opportunity. I think they work on writing and pre-writing skills and who knows what else. I know Anna has also been learning about the solar system on Mondays and Fridays this fall.