the last day we have to be good

Gabriel bounded out of bed this morning yelling, “It’s Christmas Eve! It’s the Christmas Eve! It’s the last day we have to be good!”

Mary immediately joined in the excitement. “I bought you a present daddy!”

“Ooh, what is it?”

“I can’t tell you. It’s a surprise.”

Ben was standing right there and asked, “What are you giving dad, Mary?”

“Oh, it’s stick cookies. But don’t tell him.” Hmm, I guess if you aren’t talking directly to someone they can’t hear you. 🙂

We had a crazy fun day of last minute preparations and wild anticipation. Mary, Gabriel and I went to Gateway and met friends Kerry, Andrew, Hugh, Quinn and Andie Clark. We ate lunch, played at the children’s museum and talked and talked and talked.

By the time we left Gateway it was snowing hard. We had to hurry to Grandpa Fritz and Grandma Maria’s for dinner so the entire family sat in the car as Ben delivered his Christmas present to not-his-girlfriend. Poor Ben. He was just trying to drop off an innocent little scarf and ended up with her entire family watching (we could see them peering out the window) and his little brothers yelling from the car–“Kiss her Ben!”

At least Ben can take comfort in the fact that he will have years to enact his revenge on these little jokesters.

At Fritz and Maria’s we had dinner and then performed our own live enactment of the Nativity. Mary and Gabriel have their set parts (need you ask who they are?) and the boys love to torture them by saying , “I call being Mary! I call being the angel Gabriel!” Sadly, they fall for it every time and dissolve into a puddle of tears.

Finally the parts are assigned, the costumes are put on and a loud and somewhat irreverent nativity ensues. Miraculously no one complains about doing it. Perhaps that’s the beauty in having older children– they are not necessarily more willing but simply know “it’s not worth fighting mom on this one ’cause she’s going to get her way.”
“the shepherds were sore afraid” sorry about including this extremely unflattering photo, Stefan. But photography and conducting a Nativity don’t mix!


Xander– our extremely versatile wiseman/shepherd who also played the violin for us.
No, he’s not sleeping, Gabriel is simply unwilling to smile for me at this moment. But he does look like an angel.
Grandpa Fritz was super excited about these RC trucks. “They were only $3.99 and they actually work!”
Gabriel–“Don’t throw away the box– that’s the best part!”
Time to go home!

Safely at home (it snowed a LOT), we put out cookies for Santa and scurried to bed. I replaced Gabriel’s usual fare with one Santa story and one Jesus story. We had already read Luke 2 twice tonight so I was surprised when Gabriel wanted to go slowly and talk about every picture in “When Jesus went to Bethlehem.” He pointed to Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and the angels and the animals. But most especially he talked about baby Jesus. “He’s so cute, he’s so little and he grew up to be really great, didn’t he mommy? Jesus is the best gift of every Christmas we’ve ever ever had.”