Random pre-Christmas

One night, as I was taking Savannah to soccer, I saw a sign for a "Live Nativity." I'm not sure I had ever been to a live nativity, so I decided to take Emmaline and the boys. It was VERY popular and the line was long, but it was so worth it! They had every animal from donkeys to camels and served hot chocolate to take the sting off the cold night. We'll definitely visit that as a whole family next year.


Although the big rock in the tire kind of threw a wrench in our travel plans, it did give us an excuse to visit Grand Junction and the house that Grandma grew up in. Wish we could have seen the inside, but the owners were pulling out of their driveway as we drove up.


Back in November, Tucker and I paid a visit to Cabela's while we were trying to find a birthday present for John Simmons. There was a Christmas tree set up with all kinds of kids toys around it. Tucker quickly picked up a toy gun and exclaimed, "This is what Santa's gonna bring me." If you've heard Tucker, you can imagine the volume and vigor with which this was delivered. I didn't think much about it until about a week before Christmas. We were in WalMart and he was walking around, looking at the toy guns. He would pick up one and say, "Hmmm.... wet's (let's) see. Nope. That's not the one Santa's bringing." I realized we were in trouble because he had not forgotten! Luckily they've got a Cabela's in Texas.

One last random story of Tucker. Every year we use an advent calendar that I got years ago from Restoration Hardware. The doors are fairly large and can hold tiny gifts as well as candy. The kids are funny about that calendar- they love to open the previous days' door, making sure nothing has been left inside. That's why I didn't worry one Saturday morning when I could hear the little doors being opened and closed for some time. Later that day, I saw the tiniest smidgen of a candy wrapper sticking out of one of the days that we hadn't opened yet. I opened it to find only wrappers inside. That little monkey had opened all of the doors, eaten the candy, and stuffed the wrappers back so that we couldn't tell. A couple of days had treats that he didn't like, so he either ate only one, or ate part of one and stashed it back in place. Next year we'll have to be much more careful!