Live Nativity

The week before Christmas we invited over a few families, parceled out parts to the children, and put our bump stage to good use.  

I've been in charge of putting together a Nativity Play since I was a teenager "directing" my little brothers and sisters in my Aunt Nancy's basement.  Clearly, I'm a slow learner, but after all those years of frantic, hap-hazard last-minute preparations, I finally planned ahead and wrote out a script (apparently, this is the year for script writing).  It made the performance fifty times smoother (let me know if you want a copy of the script and I'll email it to you).

We also had the kids watch the new Bible Video version of the Nativity story before they acted, so they would have a better foundation from which to begin.

Here our our cast of characters:

Aubree and Bryce reprised their roles from last year as Joseph and the Angel.  Aubree was anxious to have a speaking part. 

When the Wise Men (man) came, we had a toddler fill the role of Baby Jesus, which would have been great except he was more interested in pulling the original Baby Jesus doll out of the manger, which sent Mary and Joseph into a panic (note: you can't see the Wise Man in this picture because he took the admonition to "fall down and worship" seriously).

The whole watching and acting of the Nativity only took about 20 minutes total, then we had tons of treats while the kids played and played and played.  Good times, great tradition.