Night in Bethlehem

Last night we took the kids to A Night in Bethlehem, an event that the preschool ministry of our church put on for the kiddos. There were TONS of crafts and activities for the kids, a few animals outside for petting, and the inside of the church was transformed into Bethlehem. There were various booths with activities that corresponded (loosely) to some of the activities that might have taken place in the olden days...kneading dough, pottery, etc. Then some of the crafts were just for fun...painting nativity scene ornaments and stickery nativity scenes.

Both the kids really got into it...we let Tatum do all of the activities that she wanted except for painting the clay pot...we figured that might be a bit much...They BOTH thoroughly enjoyed themselves, and Matt and I actually ran into quite a few folks we hadn't seen in ages!

One of Kellen's comments that really cracked me up took place shortly after this picture was taken. He understood the concept of Mary and Joseph and waiting on Baby Jesus to be born in the stables...So a little while later, after he finished one of his craft projects, he asked if we could go back and see Mary and Joseph and check to see if Baby Jesus had been born yet.

We walked back to the manger area, he looked in and observed the empty manger, and simply stated, 'Nope, not yet. I guess it still isn't Christmas.'

He thoroughly cracks me up...and I have NO idea where he gets this stuff from (w-e-l-l...I guess that's not entirely true...I have a slight idea of where he gets it from...)

I guess I should have gotten some pictures of the many people dressed in the garb of the time...they did a wonderful job! Kellen was working the well pretty hard here. He had a great time with this, and they guys tricked him into thinking that he was fishing...so he kept putting the bucket back down and rolling it back up, telling me that he was trying to get some fish.

Silly boy.

I finally had to tell him that they were teasing him and that there weren't any fish in the well...Then I think the guys felt bad that he took them so seriously!

I'm so glad that the church put this on, and I really think they had a GREAT turnout. I don't know how many they were expecting, but it was packed the entire time that we were there...and considering that it ran from 6-8 and we were there from about 6:30 - 7:30, I would call that a success!

I'm so thankful that we go to a church that puts on events such as these for the kids! I'm really working this Christmas on instilling the true meaning of Christmas to Kellen, and these types of events and programs help tremendously in doing just that...