Christmas program

We are finally done!  Last night was our church's annual big Christmas concert where the adult choir sings and at the beginning usually all the kids from the age 2 until 8th grade do some kind of songs/program of their own.  This year Ehren and I are teaching a Sunday School class for 4-5 year olds and we had to come up with our little "show".  There is another couple that helps us teaching the kids so we don't have to do it every Sunday and they helped us with it too but it was a bit stressful for me.  I know it's just little kids and people really don't care, but I always get nervous and stressed out if we have to be up on the stage in front of a packed church, especially when a few of our kids are very unpredictable in what they will do.

I was hoping to come up with new songs for the kids to sing, but nobody was able to help me find simple Christmas songs for little kids.  All the songs I know are too hard for them to learn or they are too secular to sing in church.  I miss our Slovak little kids songs because we have so many cute and simple Christmas songs to choose from.  So anyway, we did our usual 3 songs which the kids sing every year.  I'm a bit embarrassed that we couldn't come up with something different but hopefully by next year we will.

To change things up a bit though, I came up with a little skit or lines to say.  The kids were holding the letters to spell "Christmas" and they had a line to say what each letter stands for.  I couldn't be more proud of them because they all said their lines so well, even better than some of the older kids in school.  Our practicing really paid off.

So there was a bit of a craziness but I think that's to be expected from the little kids.  When we started singing our 5 year old boy (who is a little autistic and unpredictable) started going all over the place and finally during one of the songs he came down to Ehren and was telling him "I'm nervous".  I finally just put him back in his spot and then he was better until the end.  Another hard and very embarrassing moment came when the 2 and 3 year old kids had to leave the stage so the older kids can say their lines.  Our Kason thinks he should be with the older group and watching us practice the lines didn't help because he knew most of them and he had it in his head that he is going to hold a letter and say a line.  So Ehren had to carry him off the stage, balling and having a fit.  I understand it's his age and that it's more because both Ehren and I were up there but still it was a bit embarrassing for all those people to see our child having a meltdown.  Well, it's done with now and we can move forward.  Luckily Kason will be with the older kids next year so he won't feel excluded.

Here's a video clip I uploaded and some pictures of our kids at home.  I will have a couple more clips of the songs but I need Ehren's help because I can't figure out how to cut the clips.  So check back in a day or two for that.