Primary Nativity Pageant

The Relief Society asked the primary to reenact the Nativity for the ward Christmas party.
I thought I'd post a few of the photos of the exciting event.
Our primary has mainly 4 -6 year olds, so I needed to set it up in the easiest possible way. I had all the girls be angels, and all the boys be shepherds except for the main parts. I made 3 little "scenes". The stable was on the stage, the shepherds were in the right corner of the gym next to the stage, and King Herod's palace with the wisemen were in the left corner of the gym next to the stage. I stacked up some old room dividers to make the scenes for the wisemen and the shepherds.

Alan and Sarah were Mary and Joseph. They waited at the back of the gym while the Narrator -(an 8-yr-old in our primary with a very expressive reading voice)- began to read in Luke 2. Mary and Joseph walked from door to door in the gym looking for room. They finally came to the door in the right front corner of the gym where the innkeeper was waiting. He shook his head when they came to the door, but then pointed to the stage on the stable indicating there was room there. Here they are looking for room: Here they are in the stable on the stage. You can see the Narrator next to the piano, and I'm sitting at the piano. Then, "nearby" in the fields, the shepherds were keeping watch over their flocks by night, when the angel of the Lord appeared to them. No one had a speaking part except for the angel. She was a girl in our senior primary who is going to be 12 in a few weeks, so she said that she could memorize the angel's part. She did a great job.
Then, suddenly, there was with the angel, a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God and singing. All the girls in primary were angels, and they sang the chorus to "Far, Far Away on Judea's plains". Kaitlyn is first angel on the left.This next picture is of the shepherds visiting the stable. The star is a Christmas tree star I put on the top of some PVC pipe. Our primary Secretary is an artist, she put make up on the shepherds faces to make them look like they had beards. I also got some large plastic candy canes for the shepherds to use as shepherds crooks.
On the left side of the stage on the floor was King Herod's palace. After the shepherds came to the stable, the Narrator read in Matthew 2 where the wisemen came to King Herod asking where the "King of the Jews" was born. Here's King Herod pointing at the star and telling them to follow it.

Santa? Did you come to the park?

We went to the park on Monday and had a nice lunch, and then walked around and discovered all sorts of fun things. Kaitlyn is at the stage where she's putting sounds together and starting to read. So, as we were walking around, I'd write the words of some of the things we were finding in the dirt. She loved discovering the words and reading them. At one point we decided to walk along a dried up stream bed. As we were walking, we saw some animal footprints. We thought they were dog prints at first, but then when we looked closer, we saw that they were deer prints.

Kaitlyn immediately thought they were Santa's reindeer prints, and we had to follow them to see if we could find him. We didn't find Santa, or his reindeer, but we had alot of fun.

William's 3rd Birthday

William's Birthday was on a Sunday this year, and he and I were both sick with pretty bad colds. So, we had a nice little family birthday. We had meatloaf for dinner (one of his favorites), and after dinner we opened presents. He got a toy helicopter and a fire truck. He loves them.
For his cake, I decided that I would let him decorate it himself. He loves to "help" me cook, so I thought he'd really enjoy doing his own cake. He helped me make up the cake batter, and got to put the food coloring in the frosting. Then, when it was time to decorate it, he was ready. He had fun pouring on the sprinkles-mainly all in the same place, but it was so much fun for him to do it with out anyone correcting him or telling him how to do it.

Here he is happy with his masterpeice:Daddy helped him cut the cake.

Here's a video of our goofy boy blowing out his candles: