Christmas Shopping, Parties, and Plays! (week 415)

As soon as it seemed that Thanksgiving was over, the Christmas movies, Christmas music, and the Christmas shopping began.  There was a Christmas time a few years back that Dad waited until the last minute to buy Mommy's Christmas presents.  He vowed that we would never do that again, so the second week after Thanksgiving has been the time in each of the past few years that Chris, Dad and I hit the stores to buy our Christmas presents for Mommy. 

In past years, it has been quite a dramatic (or traumatic experience) given that Chris and I aren't the most generous with our own money, time, or patience.  It is getting much better considering that there was no crying this year!  Typically, we save up our money throughout the year for things that WE want for ourselves.  This makes it particularly hard to use our money on other people--even the woman that gave us life.  Things are beginning to come into better focus this year.  Chris had $10 burning a hole in his pocket and I had $40 that I had saved.  We found Mommy lots of stuff that we thought she would really like and found a few things that we bought for ourselves.  In all, it was actually a pretty fun trip (for the first time), and a highly productive 2.5 hours.  We didn't have time to wrap the presents, but when we got home we hid stuff all over the place in the attic and the garage.

This week was also Mommy and Michelle's big Annual Christmas Party.  Of course, there were no children invited, so we stayed home and had Lindsey and Taylor from next door babysit us.  Daddy worked hard all day on the trivia questions so that he would make it on time to the Armstrong's for the first time in over 10 years.  We don't know how late they stayed-up, but Mommy didn't make it to my 8:00 am basketball game at Los Alamitos in the morning and Dad did not look well rested. Although I was sad to see the end of soccer season, I am now totally into NJB Basketball at Los Alamitos High School.  This year I am on the Oregon Ducks and we have a lot of good players, good coaches, and already 1 more win than last year's Cardinal team.  I am now the big guy on the court and scored about 20 points along the way to our first win of the year.

Of course, we are also coming down the stretch on the big Christmas play "The Living Creche". After basketball, we showered and changed so that we could make it to church, Sunday School, donuts, and Choir practice.  Next Sunday is our big day, so we had Tuesday night rehearsals as well.  It is getting pretty exciting with the set up in the Sanctuary and wearing our costumes during the rehearsal.  I think Chris might even know all the words to his donkey solo!