Oh, Yes, There's a Round Three!

Sunday morning I had to get to church pretty early.  There was choir practice and a small practice with a few ladies I was singing with.  The choir did a lovely arrangement of "Once in Royal David's City" and my group was singing "He is Born, the Divine Christ Child" in both English and French, so that was a lot of fun to practice!  Everything went great and it was a lovely service!

There was time for naps and dinner after church, and then we needed to clean the house because all the youth were gathering here and then going Christmas caroling!  It was nice to bring my Mom along, too, since she loves Christmas caroling.  And my Dad did fine staying home with Colton and Camille!

We had a good turnout for the caroling and it was fun delivering cookies and songs to friends and their neighbors!  My only complaint was that I somehow had a van full of very loud boys, the loudest of whom were all sitting right behind me.  I couldn't even chat with Mom, it was so loud, and by the time we returned home for hot cocoa and more cookies, I had quite the headache.  Oh, well.  A little Tylenol fixed me right up, and I'm glad they were having fun!

(Alec here always has a Coke on him-- someone spraying whipped cream into it cracks me up!)

Monday was my usual shopping day, except I got to bring my parents along (and they were very nice about buying me stuff!), which made it much easier to deal with all the crowds.  I will say, Costco was handling things beautifully, and we didn't even wait in line when we were checking out!  While I was busy with that, my kids were busy being completely weird:

They called themselves the Wizards of Weird, and that might actually be an understatement!

And then Tuesday was Christmas Eve!!!  The day was spent wrapping presents, brining the turkey, and making anything that could be made a day early-- pies, jell-o salad, mashed potatoes...  All that good stuff.  We were busy all day!  But I still found time to sneak away with my Dad and Kendra to get burgers at Jack Brown's, so that was pretty awesome!  (Bentley was supposed to come, but he was sleeping off a migraine, poor kid.)

Bentley and Kendra kept busy being Screen-agers (which probably triggered his migraine, come to think of it...)

But my younger kids played board games and watched Christmas movies!

We picked up our pizza and then drove all over town looking at Christmas lights, ate quickly, and then settled down by the piano for lots of singing!

Kendra also got in on the French braiding while Grandma was around!

Gotta love some carols on the French horn!

Why is Camille being held upside down for this?

And then we read Luke 2 and opened our Christmas jammies!!!

I'd had fun picking out all the t-shirts.  They read: Deck the Halls (Not Your Family), Very Merry, Not Today Santa, Gnome for the Holidays (<-- this is especially funny because Ryder LOVES gnomes!), My Favorite Color is Christmas Lights (also very apropos for Craig!), I'm Dreaming of a Great White Christmas (<-- yes, Colton loves sharks), and Merry Christmas Y'all!

And I remembered to get a picture with Grandma and Grandpa!

Kind of hard to believe that this was calmer than most of the rest of December!