The evening the youth in our ward took a shift as the live nativity for the Giving Machine set up in Alpharetta. I was a bit shocked when they told us that we had an assignment and that we needed to provide six youth because, well, that's just about (but not quite) everybody. But we did manage to more or less fill the necessary roles. We had two young men and four young women show up and they invited the older primary kids to participate as well, so we had three primary children present to bolster our numbers.
We certainly had younger primary children who were willing to participate but ultimately unable to because each shift is an hour long. I think putting the nativity scene in front of vanity-style lights was...a choice...and would have preferred a more...demure...background. But it was lovely.
Andrew wasn't sure what the rest of us were going to do during the hour the bigger kids were occupied. His plan was to leave me at home with the little ones, but it was a good thing we all went because Zoë ended up being in the nativity as well and they had a full concert going on the whole time as well. We heard from a French horn, a violin, a piano, a guitar, and many singers. It was wonderful!
Here's Phoebe standing by one of the Christmas trees:
Is she wearing bright blue crocs? Yes.
But otherwise she is very Christmassy. I was so impressed when she showed up at church with Daddy. They were the last ones (of our family) to arrive.
Miriam went to the Spanish ward in the morning—she drove there herself (with Andrew...and then he drove back home). And then the other kids and I left to be at church an hour early for choir practice, leaving Daddy to finish getting Phoebe dressed for church.
He often gets her dressed but, uh, clothing isn't often a battle we choose to fight. That is, we don't typically "fix" our children's outfits when they choose to wear something...extraordinary. And sometimes I fancy myself at being better at...gently convincing Phoebe to wear presentable outfits.
So I was rather pleasantly surprised when she arrived at church in this little number.
Very Christmassy. Very classy.
We'll work on footwear later.
For her part, Phoebe was particularly interested in the big, red, shiny ornaments. Here she is checking them out...
And here she is getting a little closer...
Checking out her whole face in the reflection just to make sure she's still cute (she is).
Giving her red-reflection a big hug:
We tore her away from these ornaments to go check on the status of the children (who were changing out of their costumes). She grabbed Alexander's hand and marched him back over to the ornaments:
Here she is giving it a hug goodbye:
And here we all are together looking like...we choose our own clothes.
Back at home, Phoebe is still quite interested in her own reflection. She had a lot of fun playing with the Peanuts window clings Grandma Pat sent (and staring at the cute little girl in the window).
We finished off our evening by playing Mexican Train. We're determined to play all the way through double zeros. After a couple evenings of playing we're on double sixes. Zoë spelled out "Merry Christmas" while shuffling the tiles:
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