Christmas Morning!

Christmas Eve

Before I get to Christmas, isn't this baby an angel?

We celebrated Christmas Eve in Highland in style. 

Horseback riding,

Classic Nativity,

New pajamas, 

 

and then went home for a good night's rest. On the floor of Madelyn's room. 

 Merry Christmas!

Santa

We love Santa and he loves us. Enough said. 

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

A local theater put on  "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" this year.  I have always loved this book, and several of my family members were in the play when I was a kid, but not me. So I was super excited when Madelyn wanted to try out. What a fun thing for her!

Funny how big things start so small. They needed some adults, so Mckay agreed to be the Reverend, which was a super small part and required very few rehearsals.

Then they needed some more kids for the ensemble. Madelyn was "Emily," and in the ensemble anyway, so I figured it wouldn't be too much work to drop the boys off too. They were super excited (wink, wink). They survived. 

 And then, they needed some mothers to be in the play. I ended up joining, because the rest of my family was there anyway and I have no trouble pretending to be an overwhelmed mom with a lot of children. Weird. They actually gave me a few more for the play and we became the "exercise" family. My kids ran laps or did pushups whenever we were on stage. Thank heaven Mae is an easy baby because I was able to just dress her up and take her along for the craziness. 

The day before opening night I get a call from the director. One of the girls with a very big role was super sick and didn't have a voice. She was very apologetic, but asked if Madelyn thought she could memorize all the lines and be ready to perform the next night. Madelyn already had a lot of the part memorized from attending practices and was able to pull it off! She played the prim and proper Alice Wendleken as if she were born for the part. The girl who had been cast for the role didn't stay sick forever (thank heaven!) but Madelyn was able to do 2 or 3 shows with the big part. It was so much fun!

The play also happened to coincide with Sammy's 6th birthday. He spent his birthday doing the play 1 1/2 times. He fell asleep mid way through the second show and we figured the'd be okay with one less shepherd.  He has to be the cutest sleeping shepherd round I was glad he was such a good sport.