Countdown to Christmas.... ZERO

It's here!  Christmas arrived and we have three happy, happy kids in our house today.  I woke up this morning to go to the bathroom and when I looked at the clock it said 5:55.  I knew it was a matter of minutes before the kids came barrelling into our room to wake us up!  Well, it wasn't a matter of minutes, it was a matter of seconds, because before I could leave the bathroom, I heard the excited yells of our kids, trying to wake up their dad. ;-)  I'm always ready to get up on Christmas morning, but Pete, not so much.  He's a little slower getting up.  Even though it's only a delay of maybe 10 minutes, the kids are moaning and groaning about how SSSSLLLOOWWW he is.  I remember doing the same thing with my dad.  He would always be the last one out of bed, then he'd have to get his coffee, then a trash bag.  We'd be DYING at this point.  I know Pete thinks it's hilarious, so I'm sure my dad did too.  Making the kids wait anxiously is pretty funny!

They always open the stuff in their stockings first.  No candy this year, which I'm sure has a little bit to do with Noah's diabetes, but they got ornaments, Playmobil figures, and a little gift.  They were very excited!

BUT, even more excited when they opened their next present from Santa - Skylanders!  It's a Wii game that they played at the Thirys house and absolutely loved it.  They couldn't wait to play.

Santa also got them a lightsaber popsicle set.  They are now in our freezer making pops!  As you can see, Tater was right in the thick of all the present opening. 

After they opened their presents from Santa, we gave Tater his basket.  I showed this to you all in a previous post.  He was begging for it, because he knew he smelled a bone in there.  He could barely wait for it to be opened!

We got the kids new bathrobes, that they needed desperately.  They were super-excited!  They got a few more things from us - legos, erector sets, Monster High dolls, etc..  They loved it all!

I'll admit, I had a hard time shopping for Pete this year.  He didn't give me but ONE idea!  I got him several t-shirts (that's the thing he asked for) and a "Walker Bait" shirt from Walking Dead.  Loved it!  We got him these Bears golf balls and tees and then we both accidently got each other Wii Lego Lord of the Rings.  Oops!  Guess we both think alike.  He's been playing it most of the day, so I guess it was a good choice!

One of the things I asked for was an Anne of Green Gables DVD set.  I was beyond excited when he got it for me!  He's been playing Wii all afternoon, while I've been watching AoGG!  He also got me a quesadilla maker, a 4-slice toaster (totally asked for that!), and a gift card.  Once again, he spoiled me rotten. :-)

Once everyone had opened their gifts, we all started getting around to getting things out of their packaging.  Then I said to Pete, "Hey, didn't we forget a present for the kids?".  The kids looked at us with curious looks on their faces.  I winked at Pete and told the kids we had one more present for them.  We pulled out three wrapped gifts and let them open them.  We got Noah and Madie Ipod Touches and Livie a Kindle Fire.  I don't think I've received a bigger hug from Noah than I did after he opened that!  The picture above doesn't show their excitement.  They were beside themselves!  It was so cute!

And, that is where they sat for most of the rest of the day.  Playing Minecraft against each other on their devices.  Finally made them put them away after all their batteries died, so they could move onto other gifts. ;-)

This is the mess of our living room after Christmas.  Not too, too bad.  It's clean now, mostly, as we get ready to pack up and leave for IN bright and early on Thurs.  Lots to do before that happens. 

In Tater's basket, there was this bandanna.  Seriously, how cute is he?!  He'll be wearing that to IN too.  Very Christmasy, right?  So, the roast is in the oven, the kids are playing legos and Playmobil and all is happy in our world.  Hope everyone else had a fun day!  Merry Christmas!

Countdown to Christmas.... 1

We're just a few hours away from Christmas morning, so our countdown is almost complete!  We did several activities to get ready for Santa's arrival!

First thing we did?  Hang the Santa key on our front door.  Tater "helped".

Olive didn't.

The kids got their letters to Santa ready and into their stockings and they set out the cookies for him.  The cookies then had to be moved, so that Tater didn't eat them all.  We'll set them out right before bedtime.

We got dressed for church too, because Christmas isn't all about Santa.  In fact, the REAL reason, the BEST reason is to celebrate Jesus' birth!  More about that in a minute.

As is the Drexler tradition, the kids got to open one present on Christmas Eve.

They always get books and were thrilled with the books they got this year.  Livie got a drawing book.  Noah got a "39 Clues" book by his favorite author Rick Riordan.  Madie got a book all about dogs.  Her favorite!

We still had a half hour before we needed to leave for the Christmas Eve Service at church, so we decided to sit down and read our daily chapter in the book "Jotham's Journey".  Our pastor gave it to the kids to read this Advent season and they have LOVED it! Highly recommend it.   Tomorrow morning we'll have our last entry.  Can't wait to finish it!

After that we headed over to church, so we could celebrate, with our wonderful church family, the real reason for celebration.  Presents are fun.  Family is great.  But, God loving us enough to send a part of Him to earth to save us?  That's priceless and breathtaking all at once.

John (our Pastor) did a beautiful and touching scripture reading to candlelight.  Each candle was lit as he read passages out of the Bible about Christ's birth.  Then he began putting the candles out as he talked about how the wise men left and went back to their lives.  The shepherds went back to tending their flock.  The angels in the sky were only there for a few moments and the star too went away.  Joseph eventually passed away, as did Mary, but Jesus - his candle still burning - was still alive.  Still that light in the darkness for us that will never extinguish.  Brought tears to my eyes, because you realize that all things will pass from this earth, but God will never go away.  He will be that light for us in dark places.  He will shine in our lives when we need him and even when we don't.  He is our constant.  Our Savior.  Our Hope.  We later lit our own candles along with everyone else in the sanctuary and sang "Silent Night".  THAT is why I love the Christmas Eve Service.  It's that time to quiet our hearts and our minds and focus on what's real. 

I love this famiy of mine and am thankful to be celebrating Christmas with them in the morning.  What a blessing!  Gotta go get the kiddos to bed now, because I'm sure they'll have us up bright and early in the morning!  Happy Eve to you all!

Countdown to Christmas ... 2

For our Countdown activity today, it wasn't really a surprise, because the kids saw me as I was getting everything ready, but we made cookies for Santa!  Now, usually we do a quick cookie-baking activity on Christmas Eve, but we wanted this to be a really fun activity to go along with our countdown, so we made it extra special.

I made some brown sugar cookies, which isn't quite as easy to roll out as regular sugar cookie dough.  I found that out after I made up the dough unfortunately.  But, hey, still worked.  Just got 15 cookies out of it instead of the 6 DOZEN it called for!  Had my trusty stormtrooper spatula with me too (thanks, Cara!).

I got the table all set up with aprons, placemats, sprinkles, and a ketchup bottle filled with icing.  Yum!

Once the cookies were made, I set out the plate and the kids got to work.

Noah was most excited about adding hershey kisses to his.

Madie took her time adding the icing and leaned more towards the sprinkles and mini chips to the Hershey kisses.

Livie didn't discriminate.  She added EVERYTHING to hers!

Yep.  If Santa doesn't lapse into a diabetic coma after eating hers, I'll be surprised!  They had a lot of fun decorating their cookies and we now have a whole plateful to eat ourselves as well as a plate ready for Santa.  Only 2 days away!

Countdown to Christmas....3

Today we surprised the kids again by taking them to see "The Hobbit"!  I picked up Madie from dance class and asked her if she was ready to go somewhere.  She said, "Yeah?"  So, while we were driving home, Pete got the other 2 kids ready without telling them where we were going and they got loaded up as soon as we pulled in.  We started driving and the questions started flying.  They finally figured it out about halfway there.  As you can see from the VERY happy faces above, they all LOVED the movie!  It was fantastic!  Peter Jackson did a great job really connecting it to the LOTR trilogy.  Makes me excited that he split the book into three parts.  Gives us two more movies to look forward to!  Yet another fun day with the kiddos.  Now, I've got to come up with something fun for tomorrow!

Countdown to Christmas - 4...

Winter Break has begun!!!  The parties are over and we are just days away from Christmas.  To try and make these last few days really special ones with our kids, we decided to surprise them with a fun family activity each night until Christmas.  About 5:30 tonight I told the kids to get on their pjs.  They were quick to do that, because they love to hang out in their pjs all day.  Nothing aroused their suspicions.  Then I told them to get on some socks.  OK?  A little odd, but again nothing that made them wonder if something was up.  Then, while I was cutting up strawberries and popping some popcorn, I told them to get blankets.  Blankets?  Now the wondering began.  "What's going on?"  "Are we going to watch a movie?"  "Why do we need blankets?"  Their minds started racing as they tried to figure out why I was making all these weird requests.  Then I told them to put on their shoes.  SHOES?!  Now they definitely knew something was up!  

I handed them their bowls of strawberries and a fork.  I grabbed their waters and their bags of popcorn and told them to head out to the van.  As you can see, they had NO idea what was going on!

Once we got in the van (Tater too!), they started eating their snacks and I told them we were headed to go see Christmas lights!  They were very excited as we set out on our adventure.  We went around our town to look at lights.  We headed over to the neighboring town and drove around and then headed for a light display that I was sure would grab their attention in yet another town.

This one is a special one!  One so grand and exciting that people line the streets in their cars to see it.  They collected monetary and non-perishable food donations as you watch/pass by for the local food pantry.  In the 5 yrs they've done this they've raised over $32,000 for the Food Pantry and donated over 10,000 lbs of food!  Very cool!   We drove up and saw this amazing display.  The kids were in awe.  They have their own radio station set up with Christmas music that they lights correspond with. 

We stopped and watched for quite a while.  Santa was at the house here, so we pulled up and dropped off our canned goods and got candy canes from Santa, then pulled over across the street to watch.

The kids were all snuggled up with their candy canes, watching the great light show!

We stayed there, before driving through that neighborhood to and then headed back towards home.  All in all we stayed out for over 2 hours, drove through 3 towns, saw tons of light displays - like the one above that was absolutely beautiful! - and sang lots of carols while we drove.  It was a super-fun night and only our first day towards our countdown to Christmas.  Just four days left before Christmas and three fun days of activities ahead - and all of it is going to be a surprise for the kids!  Can't wait to do more!

Greek Goddess

For Madie's history class this year, they have been focusing on a different group of people every few weeks.  So far she's done the Egyptians, the Israelites, and now the Greeks.  They have to do special projects for each.  You may remember when they did the embalming ceremony and dressed up like a god for their Egyptian project.  For the Israelite project, she made the 10 Commandments, and for this series on the Greeks, she dressed up like a Grecian woman and played Medusa in a play.  We made her a toga out of an old sheet and added a design at the bottom.  Then we braided her hair like they did in Greece back then and added ribbons.  I think she looks adorable!  What a great way to learn about history!

Thief!

While we were gone at Madie's last game tonight, Tater was a little mischievous.  Let me share the tale, shall I?  Pete and I went out for lunch today and then did a little last minute shopping.  We got stuff for the kids' teachers, something for the boys I babysit, and then decided to go get something for our furry children.  We got Olive a feather toy and got Tater a big ball and a Kong stick thingy.  I stuck them under the tree, unwrapped, so we could give them to them on Christmas morning.  Tater suspected something was up, because (despite the fact that I put his WAY under the tree) he could smell something when we got home.  When we got home tonight, Noah said, "Hey.  Did you give Tater his Christmas toy?".  I told him no, but guess what we found by the front door?  His toy!  I guess while we were gone, he decided to get it out from under the tree and play with it!  Pete asked if I took the tag off, because it was no where to be found....

As soon as we walked into our bedroom, though, we found the evidence!  A chewed up tag all over our floor.  So, he not only stole it out from under the tree while we were gone, but he chewed the tag off, so he could play with it!

Look at that guilty face!  Such a stinker!  As soon as he realized he was caught, he gave us this sorry face and as soon as he was forgiven, was quick to jump and want to play with his brand, new, early Christmas present.  Gotta love this boy! 

Church Christmas Program

Today was our very first Christmas Program for our ZONE kids and it was fantastic!  We started practicing right before Thanksgiving to learn our songs and make our props for those songs.  It's been several weeks of practice and it paid off, because they were adorable!

Today was actually a really busy day in addition to their program.  We had our "Pick-a-Gift" event, where people in the church donate items for the kids to pick through for FREE, so they can give their moms, dads, brothers, and sisters, something for Christmas.  We've done this for about 3 yrs now and they always look forward to it!  There was also a wedding directly after service and a reception in our fellowship hall, so we set up in our SS room and it worked out perfectly having it there this year.

We all met upstairs in the sanctuary for a run-through during our SS hour, so we could be prepared for our performances.  I had to take a picture of my 3 kiddos with the animals they made for our first song "O Happy Day". 

And, of course, no Christmas picture would be complete without taking one by the Christmas tree and Advent candle, right?  Can you believe I actually got a "normal" smile out of Noah?!

During our practice time, I sat on the floor and directed them about when to hold up their figures (for the first song).  They did a great job staying pretty much on cue!  You can see all the parents were there taking pictures too. :-)

During the last song, they did hand motions/sign language.  They did a beautiful job with this.  During that song, Madie sang a small solo and 2 other friends of ours sang a duet.  More about that later.

I put this picture in there, so you could see how it wasn't just ME directing this, I had lots of shepherds helping me.  Seriously, without their help this whole thing would've been a disaster right from the beginning.  They were there each week helping with practices and making their props.  They were invaluable!!  Thanks, Debbie, Diane, and Julie ... Pete too!

Directly after their practice, we had the Pick-a-Gift thing.  I sent down all the Pre-1st graders and kept the 2nd-6th graders with me.  Debbie bought all the kids a book about the nativity taken from the Action Bible.  You can see they all loved it!

Once service was getting ready to start, we got them all on the pew with their first props - the animals they colored on their sticks.

They all got lined up and got ready to work their magic!

During the second song, which was a fast gospel song, they sang using sock puppets that they had made.  It was really cute!

I think Noah and his buddy Nick were a little embarrassed to sing with sock puppets, but they indulged us. ;-)

I mean, who can resist 16 christmas-clad, adorable kids singing with sock puppets?! 

During the last song, I told you that Madie, Tobias, and Jenna sang special duets/solos.  They did an amazing job and I heard so many good things about them.  Heck, I had so many people coming up after church THRILLED with the performances by ALL the kids today.  It was fun, cute, and really special.  I even got a hug from Jim Davey!  So proud of all of them and the awesome job they did!  Such a fun day!