Christmas Activities

1. Christmas Drive Thru - Last Thursday and Friday evening, we participated in Belleview's Christmas Drive Thru Nativity again. Fortunately we had good weather (lows in the 50s and no rain). Thursday evening, Mommy and Parker were in scene 6 as Mary with young Jesus playing. Friday night was a repeat, except Daddy was able to join us as a wiseman. Parker had a great time creating all manner of interesting things with the blocks on the blanket: train engines, rocket ships, speedboats. We were joking around that he was being a prophetic Jesus by predicting future technology! We didn't get any new pictures this year, but here is our picture from last year.

2. Christmas Parties - Saturday night we attended a Christmas party at the Reids' house. We had a very lovely time and were so blessed to be able to bring home a goodie bag of homemade Christmas candy. Then on Sunday after church we hosted an open house at the parsonage. The house was absolutely packed out with people; it was so nice to have so many of the Druid Hills folks come and share the season with us!

3. Christmas Cantata and Caroling - Sunday morning at Belleview was the Christmas cantata, "Down From His Glory." Parker's choir sang a few songs at the very beginning of the worship service. Then afterwards, Parker stayed and went Christmas caroling with his choir and the youth group to the church shut-ins (while Mommy and Wesley went home for the open house). It was a big step in letting Parker be a little independent. We gave him the choice of caroling or attending the party and he picked caroling - although he did ask if we would save him one of the Christmas cookies with green icing for later! Here's a couple of pictures from the cantata:

4. More Festivities - Sunday night we were headed out to get dinner when we made a spontaneous decision to check out the Live Nativity at Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church in town. We drove down and ended up waiting in quite a line - all told from start to finish it took us 45 minutes to get through. They have a totally different approach to their Nativity - it was 18 scenes and started with the Garden of Eden, wove through highlights of the Old Testament before spotlighting the Nativity and then finishing up with two scenes on the crucifixion and resurrection. While we were in line we spotted the Reids a few cars ahead of us - we met up later with them at Dunkin Donuts. So instead of "dinner", the boys got donuts and hot chocolate! They were pretty jazzed about that, especially when the evening ended at home with "Movie Night" as they watched Frosty the Snowman in their toy room from their sleeping bags.

5. Winter Camp - Today Parker started Winter Camp at the YMCA for Christmas break. There are only about 20 kids at camp this week and because of the size of the group, they get to meet in the Youth Activities Center. This space is usually reserved for middle school/high school students, so this is a special treat for Parker. They have a Wii system in there and some exercise equipment as well as foosball and ping pong. Plus he got to go outside and play football and soccer today! He had a long conversation in the car with Daddy about how he was on defense while playing football and trying to rush the quarterback.