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!