A Christmas Carol

Tonight the kids and I went to our post theater, as in plays, musicals (not movies) and saw locally acted, produced, directed musical A Christmas Carol. It was wonderful! It was the first time the boys had seen it! I know how could I have deprived them of this wonderful Christmas classic!?! Honestly though, I'm so thrilled that tonight was their first time seeing it! The whole thing was just wonderful! The man who runs our theater is just wonderful! He moved here in 2005 with his wife who had been hired to be the posts Occupational Therapist. I can't remember exactly when but it was a few months after we'd arrived his wife died. Sadly I can't recall how (thinking it was either cancer or heart attack, I know two vastly different things, but her death was huge in our community but I did not know her). Anyways...Jack decided to stay in our community and he's very well loved and respected. Our little theater went from nothing special to having all these amazing plays. Jack was an Architect for 20 yrs before moving to our community, so his job change was pretty big. He has his 2 daughters who are very involved and normally in each play (and VERY talented). He has a gift for picking the right play, musical, etc.

Tonight was absolutely NO exception to his brillance! I don't think a single person who walked out of the Sold Out show left disappointed. It was just so wonderful, I just can't even tell you! I really want to see it again, but just not sure our schedule will allow it, and if I do, the only thing I'll change is that I will NOT bring Emma! LOL She definitely enjoyed it, but felt it was her DUTY to "sing" along, talk along, and at times cry! LOL It didn't start until late (7:30) and did not end until late (10 pm). I would like to see it again, because there was about 10 minutes that I missed because Emma was so restless that we went out into the front of the theater and she just ran up and down the hall, into the bathroom (which she discovered the FABULOUS accoustics it has! LOL) and just got some of her energy out. (Maybe it was that choc. chip cookie I gave her to try and shut her up!). I actually put my hand over her mouth a few times (not her nose I promise and it was lightly over it) trying to shush her, but I swear it made her louder and more determined! Ahhh the joys of a 16 month old future actress/singer/Queen of the world! LOL She's a delightful mess I tell you.

The boys loved it. Jacob wished he could have been in it. Mom's fault, I missed the notice on when try outs where. :( I promised I'd make sure and keep my eyes and ears out on when the next one was that there was children's parts so he could try out and Jack said he wanted to try out too! Jacob was in Robin Hood this past year, when the Missoula Children's Theater came (they come every year), and he loved it! I "think" Jackson will be able to participate next year when they come through, hopefully!

Ultimately it really felt like a reward to our family after the "fun" we've had over the last few days! LOL
As for how we spent the first part of our day. The kids did their school in the moring today, and I was reassured that afternoon's are still truly the best time for them to do it, when Emma is NAPPING! Goodness she likes to TRY to distract them, tries climbing up on the table, taking their pencils, erasers, books, what ever she should not have...she sooo wants and throws the ultimate temper tantrum when she's not allowed! LOL And forget redirection or distraction, there is no redirecting or distracting her! They managed to get everything done though. Then we went to the bowling alley as a "Goodbye" get together for two of our homeschooling families. One leaves tomorrow to head to the states for 30 days, then when they return in Jan. they're moving about 1 hr away. The soldier he's a chaplain has a new job, at a new post, and they got housing (he's already working there and comes "home" on the weekends right now), so we said goodbye to them. Then my friend "A" who I've talked about before here, she and her family leave on the 16th. So we officially said goodbye to them too from our little group. Thursday's is free bowling so the kids had fun bowling, Emma had fun running around getting chased by the little girls, hugging on the older boys lol, and just being center of attention. We ate some pizza. Took a few pictures then we left. I took Heather and her kids home then ran home, grabbed the stroller and the kids and I walked over to the bus stop and went downtown to the Christmas Market. We got Christmas ornaments for all of us. (Including one to send to Chad). The boys picked out gifts for Chad down there too. I grabbed a couple stocking stuffers for the boys. The both declared they wanted some slippers , I found out their size (European size) and will make a trip down there in the next week or two wihtout them and grab those up! Jacob got Jack a small gift, which the stinker found, but he thinks it's for someone else and got yelled at for it! I found a few things I want to get Emma, which I'll get next time I'm there and a couple other things for the boys.

The boys are getting a Wii from Santa this year, so Christmas will be a bit smaller after such a big gift, but that's been the goal, to make things smaller and take the focus off the gifts and back to Jesus. I bought them a few things while in the states so I need to find where I "hid" them and get them wrapped! LOL Jackson found his stocking stuffers already so that was ruined. I was so ticked at him. He's now banned from any boxes that arrive, until I tell him he can look at them! (I'd bought tons of batman stuff while in the states and he saw it and grabbed it all out before I could say anything. I wanted to strangel him! LOL).

Anyways...today was really a good day! I have to say it was truly a wonderful change! Tomorrow, we're cleaning! I have a ton of laundry to do. A whole house to clean really. I'm going to start with a few loads of laundry then start carrying stuff down to the basement. At 4:30 we have our community Christmas Tree Lighting and Santa will arrive on post and we'll go to the post Movie Theater and have a Free picture taken with him! :) Emma gets to wear another one of her Christmas Dresses!!!! (She has 3 that she was given!)

After that we'll come home, have left over soup, and just relax for the evening. Saturday more cleaning. I'm very hopeful we can get what I want accomplished in those two days. The biggest task for me is my bedroom. It's humiliating (well the whole apartment is right now, but I'm being a little kinder to myself since I've been sick on the rest of the place) but my room has been out of control for a while now and I just can't live like this. I want a calm, peaceful place to "escape" to. That at the end of the day I can go into and feel happy to be in there vs praying I fall asleep quickly so I don't have to look at the mess that surrounds me. All you clean freaks and orgnized guru's...my hats off to you...I am NOT one of you. I would like to be closer to what you are and that's one of my goals this deployment! I'm hoping when Chad's home in Feb for R&R we can get more organized. Get rid of A LOT of stuff we don't need, use, or simply want and just declutter. I really think I'd just feel so much better if that was done. It also means getting rid of 85% of the boys toys. This will be hard for Chad. He's the one that wants to hang on. I'm just the one that can't deal with the junk in there and hate going into their room. I am also wanting to get the shelf up in Emma's room and would like some sort of smaller cubby cabinet for her room too. So we'll be making a trip to Momax (like Ikea but even cheaper and closer! LOL). I want to put wicker baskets in the shelving unit for her shoes, socks, books, etc. Something that will just grow with her as she gets older. Right now we have toy cubby things, but they're very boyish and I'd prefer to sell them.

Well, Emma just woke up and I have been getting to bed a bit earlier lately so I'm going to try to go to bed myself!