That's my story and I'm stickin' to it!

It's a strange title.  I know.  There was talk at church this fall of not having a Christmas program because there wasn't anyone to be in charge.  That really bothered me.  So of my favorite memories of Christmas involve being in the program at church.  It may have had something to do with the fact my parents were usually the ones in charge.  I was a duck, a donkey, and some other things I can't quite remember anymore.  I knew that it was coming very quickly and I didn't want there not to be a program, so I volunteered to be in charge along with my friend Lisa.  We have worked together before on VBS and worship team and we think a lot alike.  She had done the Christmas program before and knew "the ropes" to show this newbie.  Although I've been the Vacation Bible School Director at church, a Sunday School teacher, a church pianist, a VBS worker, and several other things, I had never tackled the Christmas Program.  We decided that we would combine 2 different programs.  One that catered to the older kids (grades 1-5) that she would be in charge of and the other would feature the smaller kids (ages 2-5) that I would be in charge of.  There were a total of 40 kids or so pretty evenly distributed.  It seemed like a great plan.  

 We met in November to pick our programs. Lisa chose Sing a Song of Christmas which had parts for the older kids and classic carols for most of the songs.  I found a great little program called Mary had a Little Lamb - That's my story and I'm sticking to it!  The main character, Rachel the shepherd, was in Bethlehem that night and she insists throughout the program that Mary had a lamb that night.  Even though the rest of the cast tries to tell her it was a baby, she insists that it was The Lamb and she wouldn't take no for an answer.  There were little well known songs that used Christmas words to tell the story.  For example, "Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb.  Mary had a little lamb, born in Bethlehem." Another of their favorites was "The hay in the stable goes crunch, crunch, crunch... All through the night.  The cow in the stable goes moo, moo, moo..." 

I know from my experience teaching kids that if you take something, like a well known melody, and put new words with it, they learn it pretty quick. Actually, that also goes back to my theory on teaching in general, but that is a story for another day. We began learning our songs and were excited about the costumes.  Especially about the costumes.  Who doesn't like to dress up?  They got to choose who they wanted to be and it went pretty good.  Except for one little 3 year old.  She was bound and determined to be a unicorn.    Now, I'm pretty sure that there was not a unicorn in the Christmas story.  :)  She however had a different viewpoint.  It's a little tricky to reason with a 3 year old!  Especially when there are a lot of tears and crying involved.  The rest of us colored pictures that matched our characters and made a bulletin board.  It was pretty cool looking.

During the next week's practice, my little unicorn still hadn't given up on her choice of character.  I did find our after talking with her mom that the plastic sheep in her grandma's nativity had been chewed on by the dog and therefore had a little piece sticking up that resembled a horn and that was her unicorn.  It was in the Christmas story after all!  Well, her version of the story anyway.  I finally told her as we were practicing that if she wanted to have a costume for the program she could choose a sheep, an angel, or else she wouldn't have a costume.  I also told her that she could tell me later what her decision was.  After we went to find all the costumes, she chose to be a sheep.  It turned out pretty cute.  

Overall, the program was a success!  I got to add Rachel the shepherd to my list of Christmas program roles.  That was a new one for me.  The little kids in costume are always good for a surprise or two.  Lots of pictures were taken and ooohs and aaaahhs shared by the crowd.  The unicorn/lamb even decided to go on stage before the rest of us, but that was okay.  It was a great program and fun was had by all.  After all, as Rachel the shepherd would say, "Mary had a little LAMB!  That's my story and I'm stickin' to it!"

Our Fabulous Vacation in 2012

We had finally made our last payment to Pioneer Credit Counselling.  It had been a long journey that we hadn't asked for, but we were ready to finally go on a vacation.  We figured that we were used to making those payments so we technically had that money to spend on ourselves for a change.  As we sat at the restaurant waiting for our food, the question arose, "Where should we to go?"  There were several ideas thrown out between the two of us.  I got out a notebook and started to record our wish list for the ultimate vacation.  We wanted a place that included interesting places, a zoo, an aquarium, scenic views, and somewhere we hadn't visited before. The list included places like New York City, the Grand Canyon, Paris, Australia, Mexico, Caribbean, any ocean, anywhere with interesting scenery, and anything else that we could think of that night.  It was a great list.

As we let the list sit and think about what we wanted most, even more ideas came to our minds.  I wanted to  go somewhere warm that had a beach to lay on in the bright, warm sunshine, and a zoo/aquarium combination as is the usual when we get out of town. Ryan wanted to go somewhere exciting, interesting, and that didn't include a museum. :)  

Finally, a location that included all of those items came to mind.  San Diego, California!  There was a beach, a zoo, an aquarium, the ocean, scenery, an unvisited location, and Comic Con.  Comic Con hadn't ever been on my list of places to visit, but it was definitely on Ryan's wish list.  Just to clarify, San Diego Comic Con is a yearly international convention that celebrates comic books, comic book art, science fiction, movies, and  television shows as well as those who create these items - actors, writers, artists, producers, etc.  There are about 125,000 people who descend on San Diego for this event.  

I was a little leery of whether I would enjoy that convention, but Ryan wanted to go.  Before he registered online to have the privilege of buying tickets, he asked if I was sure this is where I wanted to go.  I said, "As long as I get to go to the beach, the zoo, and the aquarium, I would be just fine."  The chances of getting tickets to this event were minimal, but we decided to go for it.   

After he registered, they set him a link that was activated for one day that led to the purchase of tickets.  The link went active on a Saturday morning in early March at 9:00 AM Pacific time.  He was online to try to get tickets and beat everyone.  He finally go in the queue at 9:04 and was number 7300 or so in line to purchase tickets.  Tickets got purchased and we were good to go!  They were sold out at 9:32 AM.  The remaining few months were spent booking airline tickets, a hotel, renting a car, purchasing tickets for the zoo, aquarium, and anything else we thought sounded interesting.  We were ready to be on our adventure out west to San Diego, CA.