St. Nicholas Day Weekend (and Colsen as an angry Herod)

Once again this weekend may be one of the high points of our whole year! We packed in several activities.... but didn't get many pictures.

Friday night we had friends over and played the "Christmas Light Scavenger Hunt" game again after dinner.  Jo, Hayley, and Colsen won -- which I'm sure they'd want officially recorded.  :)  Afterwards we took this random picture of the girls when Rachel put all of our hair in messy buns.

Too bad everyone got the red eye!

Saturday, after dinner with our life group, we came back home to scoop up the kids and then did our annual candy caning.  Once again, despite our lack of stealth, we weren't caught!

Then the kids got their stockings from St. Nicholas, and once again I forgot to take pictures.

Sunday was the Redeemer Christmas dinner and children's pageant.  Rayna was a reader, Miles was a "horse" and Colsen, well, Colsen was a star.  He reprised his role as Herod and brought even more drama and enthusiasm this year.

Here's a clip of his angry, growling speech:

(Note the spontaneous applause at the end!)

Colsen spent the whole car ride home telling me how much he loves to be on stage.  He said, "It's weird because I'm shy when I meet new people usually, but on stage I love it!!"  He's plotting and planning for when he can play his next role.

At the end of the performance we darted out to get back to our neighborhood for the annual lighting of the Christmas tree (which we missed), hot chocolate (which we missed), a carriage ride (which we mostly missed), and Santa (who we did manage to see).

So, it was a wonderful weekend!