Still excited for Christmas

The Christmas spirit is alive and well in our house. As Amelia gets smarter and learns more in school she understands how various academic subjects apply to real-life. This comes in handy when needing to subtract whatever the date is from 25 to announce each day just how many more days we have to wait until Christmas! Amelia's daily announcements combined with our advent calendars are helping us all to count down for the holiday.

John and Amelia participated in a Christmas story pageant at church a couple of weeks ago. This event involves all the youth of the church, from high school age down to the three year-olds. Amelia has participated before but this year was John's first to don a costume and march to the front of the hall as part of the nativity scene.

It's hard to tell from the photo below, but John is dressed as a dove. The picture doesn't capture it, but he was really a cute dove! And he was really funny while onstage with lots of adults staring at him. I was sitting in the second row (close to where he was) and he kept whispering in my direction, "Mom, can I come off here and give you a hug?" I would mouth the word "NO" back to him, and he would try again. After a dozen times asking he settled down and watched the program, likely wondering why on earth he and his sunday school classmates were all propped at the front of the room. Each class was a different animal, and Amelia's first grade class were dressed as donkeys. The chilren and adults sang Christmas carols, and the adults especially enjoyed seeing the chidlren all decked out to illustrate the Nativity scene.

This past weekend I participated in the Dallas White Rock half marathon, my last run for 2009. I was pretty excited about this race as I have never run this half course before. The event also includes a full marathon and relay races in addition to the half, so the crowd of runners is large - a huge race unlike any I have participated in before. I had a great time!

But that's not the point. The point is that the photo below is indirectly relevant to the story. I had to go downtown to registration to pick up my materials the day before the race and the kids were along for the ride. I had never been to the Dallas convention center before so I didn't know that there is a large conglomeration of steer statues arranged in a public art display in front of the convention hall. I think they are designed to resemble a steer run, or whatever you call it when a bunch of steers are herded together. The kids were not happy about posing with the steers, but I thought this square was cool enough that I wanted a photo. It was more impressive in person, if you can imagine 40 steers barreling down a hill in the middle of downtown. Very Texas.

Then the night the race was over Scott and Amelia hosted their Y Princess group at our house. This is the group of ten girls and their dads that gets together monthly for fellowship and an activity. The December activity was decorating ornaments and Christmas cookies at our house. I set everything up, which was easy sinice Amelia and I had made the cookies earlier in November when the boys weere out of town, and then John and I were forced to leave the house for nearly two hours so the dads and girls could bond. It was a Sunday night, between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m., and I found it challenging to come up with something to engage John in something interesting during this time. As we were leaving the house I asked him whether he would like to participate in numerous different activities - go to a restaurant, drive around and look at Christmas lights, etc., none of which seemed to excite him. It was nearly dark outside (and cold to boot), so going to a park wasn't an option. And it was late enough on a Sunday that an indoor playground at the mall wasn't an option. I was confused and my legs were tired from the race and all John could say was "PLEASE, can we go to Chuck E Cheese?!?" And I steadfastly said no to this, as I can't think of more places I dislike more than Chuck E Cheese. The chaos of a hundred kids running amok and the noise and the lights from the games make me crazy. Especially on a Sunday night when I an happy but tired and all I want is to relax with my boy and a beer.

So what I decided to do which is COMPLETELY out of character for me, was to take John to Dave and Busters. I dislike Dave and Busters just about as much as I dislike Chuck E Cheese, but I thought there would potentially be a couple of advantages over Chuck E Cheese. One, it was a Sunday night at the more adult-oriented facility, thus less unsupervised children running amok. Two, I was hoping it wouldn't be too crowded because it was a Sunday night. Three, they have a bar, so beer was an option. So I suggested it as an option, and John was thrilled! He was SO happy, and was more adept thatn I thought he would be with playing some of the games. Of course most of the games at D&B are geared towards adults but with my help John managed just fine. We raced cars and motorcycles and even a jet ski, and at the end I convinced him to play two rounds of old-fashioned skee ball with me. For $10 worth of tokens, plus the cost of the beer, it ended up being a nice evening for both of us. Below is John on a motorcycle, staring intently at the screen.

I can't remember the cause for this photo, so let's just call it a cute photo of the kids playing around on the couch one night before bed.

And last but not least, Amelia our special snowflake. Amelia's teacher hosts a Christmas play for the entire elementary school. They are the only class to put on a Christmas play so we feel special for having been lucky enough to be in Miss Savage's class this year. The show was quite impressive, as it included six songs, dancing, a plot with Santa and elves, reindeer and snowflakes, and a cute story to match. Amelia did a good job as one of the five snowflakes and she did an even better job as one of the narrators of the story. In the photo below she is posing proudly after the performance was over.

After the Christmas play I went back to Amelia's classroom for her class Christmas party. I noticed that all the kids had letters to Santa posted on the front of their lockers, which Amelia later told me they made as a project during computer lab. Amelia's letter is cute and quite business-like - short and to the point!