The Kirk's - Boys-R-Us!

Belated Christmas Pageant

It Was Worth The Wait!

But First, A Freak Of Nature!

Both boys are in a little half-day preschool a few days a week and they had scheduled to have their Christmas pageant and class parties the last Thursday of school before Christmas break, but as fate would have it we had a freak ice storm that temporarily paralyzed the city, well Atlanta & surrounding counties too! I say 'freak' ice storm because it had been relatively warm the days leading up to it, but with some rain, then all of a sudden the freezing rain moved in, the sun went down & people's usual bad commute home turned into a nightmare!! Some people in our area had more than a 5 hour drive home which should have been around 45 minutes. Cars were stranded, flipped over, in ditches, there were some 400 car accidents in Cherokee County alone in a matter of 2 hours! This all happened Wednesday night and as the evening news ran across the bottom of the screen was flashing the school closings, and sure enough there was 'Cherokee County' - there went our Christmas festivities - or so I thought! The other thing that was rather 'freaky' about this ice storm was that the very next evening it was in the high 50s and muggy!! I'm telling you if you didn't experience it you wouldn't have believed it!

On With The Show

So now here we are first week of January and we're headed to the preschool for our Christmas Pageant. Since this is the first year either of the boys participated in it, I had NO idea that people would sit in an empty sanctuary for 45 minutes just to get a good seat! Luckily one of the Mom's in Kaiden's class was headed up that way and said she would save seats for us! That was great cause I had to go home, pick up Dave, the cookie trays, and the teacher gifts - rookie mistake! ;o)

We had great seats and not long after we sat down all the precious little manger animals started filling in! Each class was dressed as a different part of the manger scene and of course it wouldn't be Christmas without a sleigh & some reindeer!!

A Rather Dashing Reindeer

So the 'bigger' kids came in and sat down then in came the babies. Pierce's class was in a crib with wheels that had been decorated with jingle bells & felt to look like a sleigh and each of the babies wore a headband with antlers ~ I am telling you it was just about the cutest thing you could ever hope to see! Down the aisle they came, all the adorable little heads adorned with jingling felt covered antlers, well all but one little brown haired boy! Right up to the front of the church they went and once up there they were going to be read the
story of the miracle at the manger. As the teacher begins reading all the heads in the sleigh turn towards the sound of her voice, well again, all but one! Here's my Pierce without antlers and facing the wrong direction ~ Go Figure!

 The antlers are replaced on his head and as if to celebrate that fact Pierce begins to bounce up and down delighting himself with each jingle of his headpiece! For a brief moment Pierce turns to look at the teacher who is reading the book and then he turns back around to look at the congregation who are all looking in his direction ~ of course WE all know that is a coincidence because the audience is also looking at the stage~ but not Pierce, he believed all eyes were on him & he got right to the business of greeting people! With a huge grin & a wave Pierce would chirp out 'HI' to his school mates in the first few rows. He did this
for pretty much the remainder of the story & then off they went rolling down the next aisle and out of the room before chaos ensued! It was perfect!

An Angelic Serenade

Once Pierce's class was out of the sanctuary, in marched an army of Angels! There are two or three classes of two year olds (I realize Kaiden is actually 3, but he misses the school cut-off by 9 days) dressed in white gowns (large white T-shirts) with wings and a halo ~ well a few were missing their halo's and you'd be right if you guessed my angel was one without his halo! (Are you starting to pick up on a pattern here?)

 Once all the kiddos were placed in their spot on the steps the piano began to play the tune 'twinkle twinkle little star' which they had changed to incorporate Christmas and Angels, very cute! Then it was time to jingle their bells! Each had a little jingle stick and they were SO excited to sing jingle bells, each of course really belting it out when they got to the 'HEY' part. Kaiden knew the words and sang most of each song, getting distracted by his neighbor, his jingle stick, holding his halo maybe a passing dust bunny, who knows he's 3 and this was his first performance, but I thought he did GREAT!! And since I am NOT ashamed of it I have to admit that I got a little teary watching my baby up there singing in front of a whole room of people, how is it possible that he is old enough to do that already!? As they walked down the aisle to leave, I was one of 'those parents' who yelled out his name & he says he saw Daddy but couldn't see me - FIGURES!! And just like that my boys were done with their parts of the program!

Party Time!!

After the other classes performed their parts, which were absolutely adorable as well - the 3 & 4 year olds were dressed as the animals from the manger, so one class was dressed as cows, the next were donkeys, there were lambs and my favorite were the camels ~ they had burlap sacks sewn onto the back of their brown shirts for humps, I mean HOW cute is that!? We cleared out of the sanctuary and headed back down to the classrooms to enjoy their parties. It was harder to do their parties this time because unlike their fall parties that were on separate days, this was simultaneous! So I was EXTRA thankful that Dave was also there so that we could divide and conquer!

 Dave went to be with Kaiden (shocker) but Kaiden was beyond thrilled that his Daddy was in his classroom, it was very sweet!  And Dave was there to do the arts & crafts project and the book exchange, so talk about a great day!

And I headed up the hall to go party it up with Wild Man (aka Pierce) who by the time I got in there was red faced and stripped down to his T-Shirt, sounds about right!

It really was a great day and I am SO thankful that the school still put it on and that Dave could be there with us!