I haven't made it much of a secret that I wasn't feeling the Christmas Spirit much this year. But that wasn't good enough for dear friend Heidi. First she invited me to join her family and in-laws to ride the Polar Express on Wednesday night. I hadn't read the book before, but I had seen the movie, which it turns out are two very different things! The Polar Express was very cute and fun, and I'd definitely recommend it to families with young kids. It takes place on the old-fashioned Heber Creeper train, goes around the Deer Creek Reservoir, is semi-warm, and waiters and elves serve you cookies and luke-warm cocoa. The Polar Express book was handed out and read, fun songs were sung, and the Jolly Fat Man himself appeared and posed for pictures. After the train we headed to a local Mexican restaurant in Heber and stuffed ourselves silly on chips and salsa, and in my case enchiladas (this will be significant later).
I also spent Christmas Eve with Heidi's family. I should make mention here that her children call me "Fairy Godmother." I'm not sure if they even know my real name. Its all very cute to hear them come running for me and yelling "Fairy Godmudder!!" We love it and completely encourage it. In addition to Heidi's family, Sara and Dayna, and Oliver and Kristen, and their respective sets of darling daughters were there. Oh and Heidi's mother, and aunts and uncles. It was a very fun, friendly, and full house! (Because each of my friends protect their children's identity online, or protect their blogs, I will not be using their real names or linking to their blogs.)
I think we (and by we, I mean all of the adults in attendance) would agree that the highlight of the evening was having the children (all under than age of 5) act out the Nativity. We had one little boy who has a lock getting to be Joseph for a while. Of the 5 little girls, one is not yet a year old, and the other is still an infant. So the other three, who are ages 2-4, get to be angels and Mary. Our Nativity was sans shepards and wise men, but did have little stuffed animal ponies serving as the lambs and other animals.
We had reached the part of the story where the angel tells the shepherds and wise men where to go. But in our case, Angel #1 swooped in, grabbed the baby doll from Mary and took off. Mary took this quite well and continued to play with her toy horses. Angel #2, however, ran after the first angel and stole the baby doll for herself. The adults all busted up laughing and had trouble regaining composure.
Not too long after that Santa Claus (an anonymous neighbor) walked in to our party! He handed out candy canes to each child and posed for pictures. As he was handing Angel #2 her candy cane, Angel #1 executed reflexes and speed like a puma! She ran through the room, jumped through the air, and snatched that candy cane from Santa, and kept on moving.
Here we have the action shot of the candy snatching-
Santa and the other big guy-
Our Naked Santa Baby Jesus- (She started out the night in the cutest Santa outfit ever, and progressed from Santa Baby to Baby Jesus to Naked Santa Baby Jesus). (She politely declined acting in the Nativity.)
It was so fun. :)
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