A Closer Walk: Let the games begin!

*Saturday morning - the Alpine village at one of our local churches; in fact, it's the church where A & P go to MDO. It was lots of fun filled with cottages of crafts, a puppet show, and Santa Claus. Shane had to work that day, but PawPaw and JoJo were visiting that weekend and went with us. Thank goodness because there's no way I could have kept up with both of them by myself. Avery was very into her crafts, while Parker wanted to run around and check out the choo-choo

train and the rocking horse and so forth.

Avery's not quite sure about the snow.

One of the few crafts that Parker participated in...of course, there's a hammer involved!

Parker loves Santa Claus. He runs right up into his lap. Avery, on the other hand, not so much. She pretty much gets within "high 5 distance" and that's close enough for her.

*Saturday night - the Singing Christmas Tree at Bellevue with Avery. She was very intrigued with the production and sat still for the most part. But she kept asking us, "where is baby Jesus"? He was saved for the end of the "show" and was actually played by our sweet girl, Hallie Foreman, who almost pulled off Joseph's beard. I was thankful that despite that fun dancing and singing of the performance she was most looking forward to seeing Jesus. He IS the reason for the season!

*Monday night - Avery's dance program (more to come)

*Tuesday night - Shane & I went to see The Wizard of Oz at the Orpheum theatre. We enjoy live musicals and this one held up to our enjoyment. It was a nice time for just the two of us and we were very appreciative to Jeff & Julie for keeping our kids...until 11:00 that night. We walked into their home, me feeling bad for being out that late, expecting our kids tucked in for the night. But to our surprise all of them were sitting up in the den, awake, quiet and still, watching a video. Parker was asleep by the time we were out of the driveway. I was expecting some late sleepers the next morning, but they were up by 7:30. I was thankful, though, that Julie's girls slept until 9:30. Parker made up for it by the end of the week, sleeping until 10:00 on Saturday morning. That's a new record in our house.

*Wednesday night - Avery's school program (more to come)

*Friday night - Sunday School Christmas party and the highlight was the tacky Christmas sweaters. It was humorous! You wouldn't believe how much those sweaters go for on Ebay. I couldn't find Shane & I anything worth wearing so I made ours. Let's just say the hot glue gun is my friend.

Jeff & Julie really took the prize for this one!

*Saturday morning - Shane and Avery went to our church's Impact Ministries for our Operation Christmas Families. Our Sunday School class adopted a family and bought them presents and gave them food from the Impact center. Shane said it was a special time of worship and giving. And Shane was able to present the gospel to this family. Very proud of him. I can see and sense God doing a mighty work on his heart. I'm glad Avery got to go and witness this experience...even though she's only 3 I hope it made an impact on her little world.

*Sunday night - our Friends Christmas party at our house, complete with white elephant gifts, Christmas themed pictionary, and the ever so popular "name game". Granna & Poppa came for a visit and they were able to get the kids out of the house during our kid-free get together. Special friends, very thankful for them!

*Speaking of Granna & Poppa...since our families are so far away from each other we have to rotate holidays each year. This year we're spending Christmas in St. Louis, so Granna & Poppa came for a visit to bring Smith Christmas to us. Although we missed the other Smith clan, we thoroughly enjoyed getting to open some Christmas presents with G & P.