Away in a Manger....

Well, it is Christmas Eve Eve and we're getting so excited around here!!! Jack is most excited I think, but Matt and I are REALLY in the Christmas spirit right now and it is so much fun having a little person running around the house singing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus! Tomorrow is the last day Jack gets to open a Christmas sock for our Advent countdown and he is super pumped! Each day since December 1st, he has opened up a Christmas sock that is hanging on our stairs. The socks each include either a piece of candy or a small toy. It has been a fun little aide to help him count down the days till Christmas.

We had a big day at church today! First off, today was the first time we put Macy in the nursery during the service. She is 5 months old today and I was finally comfortable with giving her to someone else for a couple of hours! We belong to a huge church called Pathway Community Church with mostly younger members who have LOTS of kids. The kid ministry is HUGE at Pathway, which is one of the reasons we love our church the most. Pathway really values children and incorporates a really awesome Christian curriculum for thier Sunday morning experience. Each age has it's own room in the Kid City section of Pathway. There is a room just for babies, a room just for one year olds, a room just for two year olds, etc. So, Jack is in the 3 year old room and Macy is obviously now in the infant room. They always make sure they have enough adults to care for the large amount of children and everything is kept sparkling clean. Matt and I both volunteer in the one year olds room once a month. It is just like a regular Monday-Friday for us, really! Anyway, Macy did spectacular and they told us she was the easiest baby today! She even took a little nap while she was in there. She is so stinkin' sweet!

The other big thing that happened at church today was the children's Christmas program. Matt and I are usually not big fans of watching the children's Christmas program, but when our own child was up there, it was MUCH more humorous and enjoyable! Jack was hilarious, as usual, and we couldn't stop laughing! They had three different groups of kids throughout the service, and Jack was with the youngest aged children. It was so funny. They sang two songs, "Away in a Manger" and "Happy Birthday to Jesus" and they did one finger play. I'm not sure ANY of the kids actually sang or did the finger motions. There was a huge screen behind the kids that was a live video of them singing and most of them kept turning around to watch themselves on "TV". Including Jack. He was in the back row and he sat down on the riser for the first few minutes while the other kids were standing. They finally got him to stand up, but then he turned around and watched the screen for most of the time. FINALLY he turned around and saw us sitting in the second row (we usually don't sit that close!!!) and was smiling all cute and being a little ham for us. These pictures crack me up because they were both taken when the kids were in the middle of thier songs. As you can tell, none of them look as if they are singing at all! Good thing they had the song playing in the background, otherwise, it would have just been a bunch of kids standing on risers looking around.

Can you find Jack in this photo? He's in the very back row almost all the way to the right. He is wearing a grey sweater. This one was taken when he finally turned around for the first time after sitting on the riser and then watching himself on the big screen. He looks a little nervous, don't you think?.....

Ahhh....here we go. Once he saw us sitting in front of him, he gave us a huge smile and started waving and making funny faces. He never sang the songs, of course....

This is about a third of the 3 year olds that were on stage together.

It was bitter cold and windy today. Yuk! Nasty weather. There were snow flurries throughout the day, but nothing stuck to the ground because of the wind. Hopefully it will keep snowing tomorrow, but stop being so windy.

Tomorrow we're headed to Matt's parents in the afternoon/evening for our Christmas celebration. Matt's sister and her family live in Virginia and they are here right now, and Jack said he is very excited to play with his cousins! They have not yet met Macy, so that will be nice!

Here are some photos of Macy laying on her belly trying to roll over. I mentioned before that she rolls over now, but she's still not great at it and she's not super motivated either. She enjoys just laying still!!! She gets that from Matt... =)

Have a marvelous Christmas!