MORE music...& Christmas #1...

Warning: This is a long post! It is 3 events into 1 post....enjoy!

Believe it or not, we have more "music" themed activities to report to you! We had Ellie's school program and then the church singing for Ava...and then last week, had Jayna and Ava's school programs. All the music events this year have been BEAUTIFUL. Great work girls!!!

The above picture is a collage of Jayna's program; it was the kindergarten and 1st grade classes. They sang many songs and many of the children had individual speaking roles. Jayna found it entertaining to memorize everyone's lines and speak them to us as fast as she could! Whoa!

To catch a few snippets of the program, click on the following titles:
Come On Ring Those Bells
Bethelem Lullabye
Jayna's verse
Joyful, Joyful (and what joy the children sang with!)
Angles are Rejoicing (my favorite...and it remains the song that describes Jayna and her singing!)
My Heart, Your Home

2 days after Jayna's program, we attended the preschool Christmas program. It was darling, seeing these little children dressed up and singing to Jesus. In October, the class had "Bible Dress Up Day" and for Ava (being child #3 to attend NHP), I had decided she'd be what the other girls had been--a frog or butterfly. The day before the event, she came home saying "Mom, GUESS WHAT?! We get to dress up and *I* want to be an angel!" Oh dear....there just was not time to get an angel costume, it was 2 weeks before we moved--our house was in shambles, so creating one was not really an option. She settled on butterfly....and lamented over the desire to be an angel! SO.....when she found out that she got to be an ANGEL for the Christmas program, she was on the top of the world! You can see Little Ava Angel in the picture above and in a few songs that the preschoolers sang. To view them, click on the titles:
In A Little Stable
Oh What A Night
Rock The Baby
Above are the Glynn children after Ava's program. We've not had the best luck getting Colin to cooperate in a busy setting, so we didn't even try this time (picture on left). Wouldn't you know, he was chomping at the bit to be included...hence picture #2 (on right!).

The preschoolers had a gift exchange and Ava was delighted to receive a princess coloring tub toy. The top right picture is Ava with her friend Lily--they enjoy playing with each other everyday at school and come to find out, Lily is 1 of 4 children as well! The bottom right photo is Ava and Colin (trapped in his stroller!). Colin was holding his beloved bracelette and had crumbled a sugar cookie into his cup holder..... ;)

The next day, we traveled to Illinois where we celebrated our 1st Christmas of the year with Andy's family. We made it a (long) day trip...and got home just before midnight...with 4 children who were WIDE awake!!

ALL of Jim & Margie's children were there, the only missing person was son in law Matt who couldn't get away from work. It was so nice to see Molly and the kids, who we rarely see. Of course, it was a day full of photo opportunities, which did prove to be challenging at times....

The above pictures are the Glynn children and grandchildren photos we captured. There WAS 1 entire group photo captured just prior to us leaving for the night....but we didn't dare try that one with everyone's cameras. The picture above is full of happy, serious, and silly pictures. It was fun to be the photographer on most of these and hear Andy and his siblings create their crazy poses. I also had to play the role of "Fairy Godmother" with a sparkly wand chanting "Bibbity Bobbity Boo!" while waving it over Andy's head JUST to try to get all of the cousins to LOOK at Andy and perhaps SMILE together. What a memory.

We also got to enjoy Uncle Ben, home from college. As usual, he and Uncle Jimmy dueled for Colin time....

The children played the wii and we really got a kick out of Ellie's dramatic playing with the wii wheel and boxing with cousin Abby. To see the boxing, click HERE. We also had a creative "Happy Birthday Jesus Cake"--it was a layered meatloaf! All of the children (minuse Colin) had a turn blowing out the candle--to view this, click HERE. Again, not to be left out, Colin had some candle exposure himself. He got quite the kick out of blowing out the dining table's candle: to view this click HERE.

Baby Wesley was as precious as can be--and Colin really got agitated when I held Wesley right next to him. He was very perplexed and disturbed.

Colin LOVED the Whipple boys and it was cute to see him interact with them. He especially got into chasing Parker around and playing with Sammy and his Webkinz parrot.

And speaking of Colin....it will probably go down as the "Christmas of Colin and his beads". We did not take the girls' (Colin's?!) beads with us...but sure enough, he found some at Grandma's house! He took FOREVER to warm up to the relatives this time...but as you can see, in the lower right picture just above, Colin eventually did warm up and even shared a string of purple beads with Uncle Ben.

There were gifts, and for once, Andy did not get photos of each child opening everything! :) He did capture the cool tye dye swimming shirt Ellie received and the knitting machine that Jayna received. Stay tuned though....the absent photo here is of Ellie and Jayna getting guitars. Surely there will be documentation of this in the future! :)

Merry Christmas week! As we were getting ready to eat our feast, we all sang Happy Birthday to Jesus and Andy's Mom commented that we would all be so sad if people forgot to celebrate OUR birthdays. Let us never forget the reason we are celebrating this week!