The L-Train: Looten Christmas

So the Christmas posts are long overdue, but with the holiday craziness and the whole car-shopping thing added in, time has not been on my side! But here's the first Christmas update...

We started our Christmas festivities with a long weekend in Springfield with the Looten family. We all got a kick out of thinking about last year's Christmas, and how different the family is this year. Last year it was just the original family, and one "out-law" (that would be me). But in the last year there have been two new family members added; Luke and Elena, and now there's another one on the way. I get the feeling that Looten Christmases will get pretty exciting over the next couple of years!

This year, we mostly just spent time together. We ate lots of good food, and baked lots of good desserts. We went to church on Sunday morning, then Sunday night we went to see a magic show in Branson. Grandma had taken everyone to see the show 11 years ago, so she thought it would be fun to go back again. It started off pretty promising, with lots of fun tricks like shutting the woman in the cage, putting a blanket over it, and having a panther in the cage when the blanket came off. We didn't get to see the white tigers that the show is famous for, but we figured they'd be featured in the second half... wow, were we wrong! At the start of the second half, Elena decided she was done, so Josh and I took her to the cry room, which really didn't keep us from watching the show, because it was a soundproof room with a window and piped in sound, so we could still hear and see everything that was happening. Unfortunately, we kind of wished we couldn't see and hear it all! The second half of the show was his "Christmas Spectacular" but there wasn't anything spectacular about it. First, it started out with a rapping polar bear-BAD SIGN. It was a play/musical about twin elves, a good elf and a bad elf, and the bad elf was trying to destroy the toy shop of the good elf. But the acting was horrible, the jokes were bad, the singing wasn't great, and there were about 2 magic tricks the whole time. And it was loooooong... so by the time it was over, Grandma was ticked, and the rest of us were just ready to GO. By the time we got home, though, we were all laughing about how horrible it was, and debating over the actual worst part (there were too many to choose from). So, despite the show being horrible, it certainly gave us a funny holiday memory to tell stories about! :)

We opened presents on Christmas Eve, and then went to the Candlelight service at First Free. It was a pretty neat service, they gave everyone a little candle, and then started lighting them on the ends of the row. People passed the flame along until everyone's was lit up. It was really pretty to watch the candles light up gradually across the sanctuary. Afterwards, Josh, Elena, and I drove home, and got ready for Christmas morning! :)

Some of my favorite pictures from the weekend....

Not exactly a look of love... :)