We practiced for the big day for many days. Finally it happened. My parts in the show were King Herod, the Roman soldier, and then a shepherd.

Just so you know, we brought Gold, Common Sense, and Fur.

In the play, I was a wise-man, and the angel Gabriella, and one of the angels that sang “Glory to God in the Highest”. My friends that came were from my ballet and basketball classes. We did some art projects. They were “scratch-outs” where you take this little pencil and scratch out designs. We had fun when we did our Nativity play.

When our grandma was visiting, we were reading the story of Christmas just for fun (to test Ella on her reading) and we were reading a book about these kids that were doing a Nativity play. And then together we had the idea of doing a Christmas play for kids. We found a good time to do our play would be when we had a special Christmas party just for kids. We have some friends from our basketball team and Ella’s ballet who we invited to the party.

Along with the Nativity play we also practiced a song and had Christmas activities planned. We rented a bounce house (which was probably the biggest hit). We also got seven boxes of pizza for all the kids. (We had lots leftover the next day. I even had a piece for breakfast!) We also had two piñatas and cake. We made two extremely nice cakes. One tasted so good, it tasted a lot like honey. It was very good for you. It had fruit on it and it tasted so delicious.

We had a toy-drive to and we stuck the big box for the toys near our front door entrance and when our friends came over they brought a toy present to put in for the poor kids that it would go to. We kids each gave a toy as well. We gave our old tinker-toys, and a new battleship game, a new truck, and a new Barbie.

Tomorrow is our big day. A Christmas party for children in our city, a long list of over 50 invitees –the kids friends from ballet class, and basketball team, and neighbors and new friends’ children.

It was our kids idea to put together and perform a play of The First Christmas. They have chosen all of their own parts and costumes, while us big people are just piecing it together with giving the cues for each part, and some music, and a Spanish translation for the audience.

Pray for us.

Tonight as I tucked my kids into bed and we prayed for the night, Evan inserted a beautiful little prayer inspired by something he had read today: “Jesus, help us, and all of our Family around the world to give physical help to the Tiny Tim’s, hope to the Bob Cratchets, and a change of life to the Ebeneezer Scrooge’s.”

I want to do Christmas just like that this year. Amen!