Hi, everyone!
At Grandma and Grandpa’s church, the special family evening program before Christmas is called ADVENTure. That seemed like a good name to describe what I’ve been doing! Grandma helps me put one more item for the community food shelf in the reverse Advent calendar box every day! On Day Four it was peanut butter. The next day, Grandma and I started making batches of Ground Hog Day cookies to put in the freezer. I helped Grandma make the salted nut bars and the peanut butter bars. We made double batches of each, so Grandma had lots of cut-up bar cookies to wrap and freeze!
The day after we made the cookies, Uncle Steven asked Grandpa to come over to the new house. Uncle Steven was setting up the model trains Aunt Kara got from her uncle. He needed help figuring out how to wire the track so the trains would get power all the way around the track layout. Aunt Kara’s uncle had a lot of train cars! I liked some of the specialty cars best! By the time Uncle Steven and Grandpa were done, the train could go all around the track layout at a speed that didn’t make it derail!
Day Eight of the reverse Advent calendar was a box of tissues! Day Eight was a Saturday, so Grandma and Grandpa took me to get a Christmas tree in Wayne county. We went to Allen Franke’s tree farm and found a cut Fraser fir that was just the right size right away! I helped take my new tree friend to the baler and then to our car. Getting the tree into Grandpa’s new car was much easier than getting my other tree friends into Grandma’s car in previous years! We were back with our tree 57 minutes after we left home!
We didn’t put our Christmas tree up right away. Instead, we went out to the bay on Sunday and Monday to put the protective fence up around the rhododendron. When we got there, we found two big branches that had fallen from our maple trees — one in the back yard and one in the front! We were lucky they didn’t hit the house when they fell! This year, we not only put up a fence to keep the deer out of the rhododendron, we put netting on top to keep out whatever ate all the buds last year. I hope this works! When we got back into town, I added the Day Ten oatmeal to the reverse Advent calendar box.
Meanwhile, my Christmas tree friend was standing in a tub of water in the garage. We waited two more days — until Wednesday — to put it up. I helped Grandpa fit the stand insert on the trunk, then Grandma and Grandpa carried the tree in and set it up in the holder. Guess what? Grandma let me unwind the baling twine from the tree! It was fun to see the branches open out as the twine unwound!
We let my new tree friend get used to being inside overnight before we started decorating! On Thursday, I helped Grandpa put the lights on the tree. Grandma waited until Friday to put the ornaments on the tree. She let me put on my favorite moose ornament! On Saturday, Grandma cleaned up all the fallen needles and put the skirt around the tree stand. I helped arrange the ring of jingle bells around the skirt. Doesn’t my tree friend look nice now? I sat up with my friend the first few nights it was inside, so it wouldn’t be lonely in a strange place.
Grandma says yesterday was a day that had a lot of moving parts! First, there was special music at church — both a bell choir and an instrumental quartet for the anthem. Grandpa and I decided to stay home and out of Grandma’s way! Then, in the afternoon, we all went to Tuba Christmas! Grandma and Grandpa and I got there early to make sure we could find seats all together in the balcony. I helped save Thomas’ seat by sitting in it until he came! There were more low brass players than ever this year! They didn’t even all fit on the stage! Some were on the front stage wings and some were playing through open doors backstage! They sounded very nice and looked very festive!
Uncle Steven’s family had supper with us, because we had one more event to attend! Grandma and I went with Uncle Steven’s family to ADVENTure, the retelling of the Christmas story outside at Powers Farm Market. We followed lighted trails to hear about Mary and Joseph’s journey and the shepherds and the wise men. At the very end there were live farm animals and people portraying the manger scene when Jesus was born. Some of my church friends from baking and pie making and apple picking were angels and shepherds and wise men!
When the ADVENTure story was finished, we got to pet some of the farm animals. The goats wanted to eat Thomas’ rainbow mittens! James and Thomas both got a chance to hold the guiding star!
The church ADVENTure is over, but we still have lots of family ADVENTures ahead! The reverse Advent calendar box is getting full and I want to see whether all the rest of the daily items will fit! I’m especially looking forward to our holiday bread party next Saturday! Today, I helped Grandma make gluten-free scones. We decorated them to look like little versions of Grandma’s stollen. Now some of our friends who can’t eat stollen because of the gluten in it will have something they can eat to take home from our party!
Love,
Lion-san
You have been very busy! Kara’s uncle had lots of train cars . We liked them all! You were surely busy last weekend, what with the Tuba Christmas then the ADVENTure . We like the idea of the reverse Advent calendar. The tree looks nice. You must be sad to see all branches down at Sodus.