Getting ready for Christmas!

I know there are still a few of you out there checking this blog, so I apologize that it’s taken so long to get back to it. It’s a busy time of year, and things have been going well with Elijah, so it’s easy to forget about this, or to keep pushing it back. But, I’ll try to give you a good, but brief update about what we’re up to. Mainly, it’s getting ready for Christmas!

The weekend after Thanksgiving, we put the lights up on our house, and started getting our decorations ready inside.

Something that we’ve been doing over the last few years, with the help of Julia’s sister Jennifer, is collecting and building up our Christmas village scene. She started Elijah on this, and each year has been adding to his collection. Julia and I have also added a couple pieces as well, and this year we started Abigail on it as well. Here’s a picture of the scene in Elijah’s room.

This time of year there is always a lot of different things going on as well. A couple weeks ago our city put on a Christmas event with lots of fun things to do, including decorating cookies, playing in bounce houses, riding some rides, and they even had sledding.

We also were able to take a few hayrides around town!

Julia’s dad, Dave, AKA Grandpa Rice, is a member of Rotary and rings bells each year for donations. We usually try to go and “help” him with this by inserting some young energy into the mix. Not sure it really helps, but some people do enjoy seeing the kids ringing the bells.

But one of the biggest events we’ve had is the production we put on at church. Each year the kids do something special, under the direction of Julia’s sister Jennifer. This year they did a memorized telling of the Nativity story, with some bell ringing, and singing.

Here they are beforehand, all dressed up and ready to go!

Last night, we went to an event hosted by a church near our home, where the kids got to roast marshmallows and have hot chocolate by a fire. Abigail didn’t want to sit too long, so she went off to play in an field while I followed. Julia and Elijah stayed warm by the fire, and sang Christmas songs with the others.

Those are just a few of the things we’ve had going on, and we’ve been staying quite busy.

This week’s been a bit up and down with health as we seem to have some type of bug or something running through our house. Elijah got hit today, and Abigail seems to be coming off of it. Julia and I are not quite sure if we’re starting it right now or not, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

Elijah is all done with his physical therapy, though there is still a lot of progress to be made. But he’s as active as ever, and continually pushes himself harder. It’s still a while before he has his next doctor’s appointment.

Julia and I have some other health issues going on, but I won’t get into those too much right now. I’ll update you more in the next post.

I hope you are all doing well, and staying healthy! Merry Christmas!