Caiah had fun though!
I'm collecting pictures of fun signs that are all around town. Lots of grammatical errors and misspelled words. I think it's funny that someone crossed out the "e" and added the "r". :-)
I know these posts are late but they have been sitting as drafts and I really need to get them posted before I can move on to the present.
I had planned so many pre-Christmas activities I was really hoping the kids would enjoy them. But after our restaurant experience and our quick trip through Bethlehem, I was a little worried. Then we had our night where the kids were supposed to pick out gifts for each other. That was even worse. Orin couldn't focus on what to get Micaiah because all he could think about when he was looking was what he wanted for himself. I'm sitting in the store thinking, "Am I teaching these kids anything!?!?" We ended up leaving because Orin just couldn't decide. We had hoped to go back and try again but never had time. It turned out fine though because the kids got plenty of gifts and didn't need any more. We'll try again next year.
But after that slow start to our Advent celebrations we finally found our groove and the kids really enjoyed the activities I had planned each day. Every morning they couldn't wait to pick from the advent calendar.
One of their favorite things to do is make sugar cookies.
Here are the three pictures I got from Bethlehem Revisited. Unfortunately, we weren't there long enough to get many more. Here is Orin waiting while Damien took Caiah to the potty. He had so much fun playing on those steps.
I think Caiah's favorite part was petting the animals.
In the car on the way. They were so excited they had their hats and mittens on the entire 45 minute drive to Waxahachie.
And by strangest I think I mean the worst. Here is the recap. We went down to Waxahachie to go to Bethlehem Revisited. We went last year and had a blast. We had gone to a birthday party in the afternoon so the kids were really hungry for dinner. Waxahachie is a quaint little town about 30 minutes south of us. We found the cutest restaurant right in the middle of the town square on Main Street. It was 7pm and Bethlehem Revisited didn't close until 9pm so we figured if we ordered quickly we could make it before 8pm. Boy we couldn't have been more wrong. I took Orin to the bathroom. The waitress asked Damien if we were ready to order and when he said we needed a couple more minutes she said, "Oh, thank goodness." That should have been our first clue. Well, a few minutes later she came back and we ordered. She even let us get an extra side on the kids dish that they were going to share. Cool. So we wait. And wait. And wait. The kids are STARVING. They hadn't eaten since pancakes at 11am (they are so blessed to have a daddy who made the chocolate chip pancakes while I was at the store). Luckily they had given us some bread and I shared my salad with the kids. Otherwise I think we would have had a mutiny on our hands. Finally our waitress came and said the printer in the kitchen had run out of paper so they order she had put in the computer had never gone through. Ugh. Normally not too big of a deal except that we were in a hurry to get to Bethlehem Revisited...and that the kids were asking every two minutes where their food was. So, we repeat our order to her. She tells me I can have an extra side too. Cool. So, twenty more minutes go by and our food finally arrived. Yeah! The kids extra side isn't there - we don't say anything. My extra side isn't there - again, not worth mentioning since they were both extras anyway. Unfortunately she didn't come back for 10 minutes. I needed sauce and couldn't eat my food until I got it. But even worse, Damien's pork chops were TOTALLY burnt! I mean, I've never seen anything like it. The bottom of one was completely black. Now, we NEVER send food back. Maybe twice I've asked to have mine heated up if it was cold. But we'll let almost anything go - even mistakes. But this was not edible. And since we didn't want to pay for something we couldn't eat we swallowed our pride and told the waitress. Thankfully she took it off of the ticket. She had already offered us free dessert for the long wait we had. We ordered it to go and ran out the door. It was 8:30. We would have just gone home and went back to Bethlehem Revisited next week but the kids wold have been devastated. All they could talk abut was seeing baby Jesus. So we ran over there, went through it in about 25 minutes and headed home. The kids were exhausted. It wasn't quite the experience we had hoped for. They went right to bed as soon as we got home.
About 30 minutes ago we sat down to enjoy our free pie. We opened it and wouldn't you know - NOT the one we ordered. :-)
Since much of the "holiday season" is about traditions, I'm trying to keep my tradition of posting things about a month after they happen. :-) As our family is so young we haven't really had the opportunity to establish any traditions - at least for more than a year or two which I wouldn't really count 
as "tradition". It's also a little hard to make our own traditions when each year we celebrate with our extend family in New Orleans. So we've adopted a few traditions that we celebrated growing up (cutting down our own tree, etc...) and we'll try to create some of our own. All of that to say, we didn't 
do much this year! :-) I'd really like to celebrate Advent. But in our current living situation, much of that would be pretty difficult. We literally don't have room for a wreath and candle and other Advent celebrations. And my lack of planning as well as most of our Christmas "stuff" being buried in storage kept our activities to a 
minimum. But we found the time to do a few things as a family. I bought some sticky window decorations and the kids had a blast putting them on the windows - and for the next three weeks enjoyed taking them down and putting them back up almost daily. Orin would stack them onto 
Micaiah's back and call it his backpack. We also broke out the Christmas CDs (which we had a hard time convincing Orin were better than his normal music), checked-out holiday related books from the library and watched some Christmas videos. Orin loved reading through the Christmas story quite a few times 
during our nightly devotions. His favorite parts were the angles. He talks about them almost daily and will say "Look, I see an angle up in the sky," or "I don't see any angles right now." We also went to the Festival of Lights at a local park. It's about a 2.5 mile drive-thru light show. For those of you in New Orleans, it's similar to City Park's Christmas in the Oaks (how it used to be, at least). We drove with the kids sitting in the front with us. They absolutely LOVED it. At the end there was a 
"Holiday Village" which was pretty much a small amusement park with Christmas lights (high prices and all). We scrapped up enough change (we literally paid for the tickets in change) and Orin rode on two ride. Lastly, we went through a Walk Through Bethlehem. It was a huge production put on by the Seventh Day Adventist 
Headquarters in Maryland. It was a lot of fun for the kids. They give you fake money at the beginning and you can buy things along the way at various parts of the "city." We also had to pay taxes along the way and bribe a couple of guards. :-) Although we bought tickets for the 7pm show we didn't get in until 8:30. It was a long wait in the auditorium but there were different performances. I was a little disappointed by it, but I'm not sure why. I was hoping for some live animals. In fact we talked it up to Orin by tell him we'd see camels and sheep, etc... Luckily, he was completely satisfied with the fake ones.
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