Christmasy Activities

Last Sunday evening we drove down to NJ with Ricky's family to go to the Mt. Laurel Living Nativity. The church that I grew up in, Fellowship Baptist Church, has been doing this living nativity for 19 years now! Every year it gets better and better and I think it had been 5 years since I had gone through. It sure brought back many good memories of when I would dress up like Mary and be visited by an angel or dress like an angel and visit shepherds and sing "Gloria in excelsis" or many other parts that I would play. One year I was the person in charge of all the guides, who were/are usually a bunch of teenagers. That was a stressful year! :)
Chase and Dominic loved walking through the Nativity and seeing all of the live animals and the flying angels and seeing the bible story come to life. It warmed my heart to see Chase acting out a lot of the scenes that we had seen throughout the rest of the week.

The flying angels singing to the shepherds.

the town of Bethlehem

And they called his name Jesus, for He would save His people from their sins.

Friday evening we went to Shady Maple for Ricky's work Christmas dinner. It was a lot of fun. Joanna ate so much candy I thought she would be up all night, that girl is crazy! :) Chase also had a good time playing with all the other kids and he won a John Deere toy backhoe that he was very excited about. We are so blessed that Wexcon had another good year this year and generously gives back to their employees. With the economy the way it is right now there are many construction companies going out of business or not making money so we know how fortunate we really are. Ricky's boss also gave a very nice speech and complemented Ricky a couple times in his speech which made his wife very proud of him :D
Saturday morning Ricky's mom came over very early in the morning and Ricky and I went out hunting for the last day of deer season in PA. We didn't see anything but we had a good time so I guess it's OK. the second time we moved spots we walked really far in the woods and the walk back to the truck took 45 minutes which doesn't sound like a lot but just imagine wearing about 5lbs of clothes, carrying a heavy gun and trudging uphill with really big boots that probably weigh 5lbs. We were both sweating and huffing and puffing by the time we got back to the truck. It felt good though and Ricky thought he was a Sherpa so he was having fun too.

Also it had turned into a beautiful day with the sun shining and blue blue skies.

I've felt kinda sick the last couple of days but even so we decided to make our second annual gingerbread house tonight...

I know our faces are kinda blurry in this photo but I had to include it because I think the look on Chase's face says it all. He was so excited to do this again this year.

Joanna once again was trying to eat all the candy but we wouldn't let her.