Christmas Season - part II

This past weekend was another wonderful time with Jer!

We all had fun at the BRTC Christmas party Friday evening. One of the games we played was Christmas Song Title Unscramble. Everyone on the team would hold up a piece of paper with a consonant on it or a blank colored piece for a vowel while the leader would rearrange the team members to form the title of a Christmas song--NO talking (or signing or panamiming or humming). Jer was given a blank colored page to hold one round and he decided that he was an "A"; so he was very cutely disappointed when the title was completed and he was an "E". We also danced and ate and just had fun!

Saturday, JM made pancakes for a late breakfast (Yumm!). We washed some of the dishes. Then JM and Jer dropped me off at the college to finish some work while they headed on out to Winchester to have fun at the Discovery Museum. They played "emergency," worked with simple machines, did some rock climbing, and checked out other parts of the museum as well. Back at home, we had spaghetti supper and watched Ratatouille. I thought it sounded like a rather improbable premise to start with and the entire movie was equally improbable. Suspending disbelief, it was a cute, clean movie with some good messages about dreams and loyalty to family and friends.

After the movie, we finished reading through the Christmas story. The last weekend we had with Jer and this weekend, we reading a re-telling of the Christmas story in parts along with opening different "gifts" to reveal the pieces for a nativity scene--Angel, Mary, Joseph, Jesus, Shepherd, and Wiseman. The final piece of the re-telling was talking about the gift we can give to Jesus--ourselves. Jer is getting better at identifying the characters in the story and answering some questions about the main points in the story.

Sunday after church, we read the complete Christmas story and then let Jer open some of his gifts. Some of his gifts were sent home with him to be opened on Christmas with Reb's family. He had a little bit of time to play with his gifts before he had to head home.

One of the highlights for me this weekend is that Jer started using my full name, instead of the shortened version he had used when he couldn't say my full name. JM and I hadn't made an issue of what he called me--we continued to use my name instead of the nickname he used, but never (to my knowledge) corrected his usage of my name. And it is proved once again--"I've had a variety of nicknames, but none of them stick."

JM stayed up late completing the last exam for his class for this term. He's done with classes until the middle of January.

Sunday evening, Purcellville experienced a complete power outage, so Awana was canceled for the evening. Instead, JM and I started working on putting together our Christmas letters. We'd written up a letter back in November. I had finally gotten it printed just last week and picked up stamps and envelopes on Friday. We only made it through about 45 of the most immediate family--close to a third of our list. We'll probably hold off on doing the rest until Wednesday--work on them on the flight to Kansas. Hopefully, I'll get around to posting most of our letter on our blog before too late, but it'll probably be next year.