Advent, Week 3

The third week of advent was a little more interesting than the second week.  There was more time in the kitchen and lots of music.  We're ramping up to Christmas!

Last Saturday we baked and decorated gingerbread cookies.

 Yummy!

On Sunday we went to a jazzy Christmas concert at church.  My parents sang in the choir, a friend, Wendy, was a featured singer and soloist, and our friend, Mike, played piano and various groups performed his arrangements. 

On Monday we made garland of popcorn and cranberries for the birds.  I gave the kids thread and craft needles and they did really well.

 Ashlynn was able to thread the needles.

Carter was very serious about his work.

We took the strands outside and hung them on a bush.  Quite honestly, I don't know what happened to them other than they disappeared.

Tuesday was Ashlynn's holiday choral program at school.  My teaching partner, Tracey, was nice enough to cover for me in the afternoon and Eric's grade level partner, Karen, watched his class, so we were able to attend (plus Grandpa came to the morning concert and Nana, Papa, and Carter came in the afternoon).  The second grade sang "The Dreidel Song" and "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree".

I don't know what happened, but my photos using my big zoom lens were terrible (I thought that I had it in the wrong mode, but I'm starting to think it is the lens, that happened to be dropped right before the concert.  Boo!).  Here's one of my only clear shots (before I switched lenses):

In the afternoon, we played a game for our advent activity.  It's a game in which we put items from around the house in gift bags and give them to each other.  We open the "gifts" and use nice manners to practice how to say thank-you and find nice things to say about the gift.  After the first round we throw in items like socks or underwear so we have to work a little harder to find reasons to be grateful.

It is a game we played with Ashlynn years ago, but this was Carter's first time.  Here he is after finding underpants in his bag:

 Ashlynn got some colorful rocks:

In the evening, we celebrated Grandpa's birthday with dinner at the Thai restaurant in town (the kids are really learning to like Thai food.  Yippee!) followed by a mud pie that Eric made at our house.

 Wednesday was a morning of Christmas crafts and activities in Ashlynn's classroom.  She was in a group with some of her favorite classmates.

 Carter made a pretty awesome reindeer hat at school that I just had to share.

 On Wednesday evening, Santa rode up our street on a firetruck.  We love this event every year!

Thursday evening was Carter's preschool Christmas program.  I will not rant about how the pastor (at the church where the preschool is) messed up what is a sweet evening of adorable children (a day has passed and I am still irritated, which is pretty major because I let most things go after a good night's sleep), but allow you to enjoy a few photos I got after the performance. 

 With his friends, Riley and Matthew.

 With Alex (BTW he says he's going to marry Alex, they are going to live in a small house but drive fast cars (a Mustang and Ferrari, specifically), and have a girl and boy named Sissy and Cool).

 With baby Jesus

 

Christmas is almost here!