Message

On Christmas Morning...

...I'll wake up bright and early
Be the first one out of bed
With the mistletoe above my head...

Guess who was up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed very, very, very early this morning?

Watch & Listen: Angels We Have Heard on High

Courtesy of the youngest Sprout, the most played track this Christmas season in our house (as in all the time), played and sung by the Piano Guys:

Watch & Listen: A Hallelujah Christmas

Watch: WestJet Christmas Miracle

Watch/Listen: In the Bleak Midwinter

Waiting

It's early morning, I'm drinking my first coffee of the day, listening to Christmas music from my favourite Toronto radio station (even though I now love living where we do I still miss some parts of TO).  Mostly, I'm listening for the pitter patter of feet of Sprouts coming down the stairs to see the tree all alit surrounded by presents. 

Oh, there's Jo upstairs shouting, "It's Christmas!".  Gotta go...

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Hallelujah Chorus

I wish I had thought of this for our school Christmas concert.  I'm all about multi-media (my class is presenting a Fortunately/Unfortunately Christmas story that they wrote and illustrated for the program), but this presentation by a fifth grade Inuit class in Alaska takes the cake.

Cafe Press Dot Ca

As my family knows, I like to give gifts. I think I can safely say that giving gifts is one of my love languages. I especially love Christmas when I can not only buy gifts for under the tree, but also co-ordinate stocking stuffers to go with them. This year was no exception. For example, in his stocking, among other things, JK received a "Trucktown" book, a die cast snowplow, and a digger ornament to hang on the tree.

As a family we also like to have an ornament on the tree that suggests a family trait, a favourite hobby or activity, or reflects something that happened during the past year. Many years in the future we will look at all the ornaments on the tree and wonder why the tree is leaning over remember our family's adventures and activities.  This year I found great ornaments at cafepress.ca.  My spouse and the Sprouts each found an ornament in their stocking Christmas morning.  I enjoyed watching their expressions as they opened the envelope and saw what was inside.  Each ornament was proudly hung on the tree alongside the other family ornaments.  Check out the Cafe Press website if you are stuck for a gift!

Flash Mob

The food must have been really, really delish!

Silly Saturday

Lesson plans for the beginning of the new year are finished. Yay! So, I'm feeling silly today, which means there will be lots of laughter from JK, groans from my spouse, and lots of eye rolling and "Oh, Papa" from FK.

Slay Ride

Today was Christmas concert day at our school. The day was an abbreviated school day starting at 11:30 AM, with concert at 1 PM, then feast at 2 PM. Because of the schedule, the day ends up being a "reward for good behaviour day", or in other words, a class Christmas party. For the boys in my class, it means bringing XBox systems and numerous controllers, hooking up two TV sets via SystemLink, and then shooting, fighting, maiming and killing bad guys and aliens on distant planets. Four boys gathered around one TV set, four boys the other, the rest all huddled around shouting out instructions and other gamer advice. Strangely enough, the video games ended up tearing down the social hierarchy among the boys. All of them were on the same level, all were equals, laughing, encouraging and working together as a group. I saw video games in a different and positive light today. I realized I need to be less judgemental of what video games "seem" to be doing to kids, and instead focus on how I can use technology in the classroom to engage my students.

The Wexford Carol

When musicians like Alison Krauss and Yo-Yo Ma get together, you know that something amazing is going to happen.  I like the beginning of the video when they joke around about getting the recording right the first time. 

Christmas Tunes

The Christmas season is one of my favourite times of the year.  Not for gift giving (or receiving), not for decorating, not for cooking, not even for photography, but for the music.  I love listening to Christmas music.  All types and genres of Christmas music, too: classical, jazz, instrumental, choral, country, rock and so on.  This love of all kinds of Christmas music has passed on to the Sprouts.  On Friday FK not only sang along but asked a myriad of questions about the Christmas songs we listened to in the car on the way home from town: who wrote the songs, who sang or performed them and why versions were different.  Today, JK sang a number of songs at the top of his lungs, to the amusement of his parents and the annoyance of his big sister ("It's not Frosty Santa, it's Must Be Santa!"). 

One of the family's favourite performers is the Barenaked Ladies (yes, I said it).  The songs we listen to with the Sprouts are the "kid-friendly" ones, like "La-La-Lemon", "If I Had a Million Dollars", or "Pollywog in a Bog", from their album "Snacktime" (of which "7 8 9" is a personal favourite of JK).  The Barenaked Ladies also have a Christmas album, which has an eclectic mix of Christmas music.  One of my personal favourites is "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings", partly due to the energy of the performance and partly due to the clean transitions of the arrangement.  I put this song on a Christmas compilation CD for the car (which also includes performances by Emmy Lou Harris, Chanticleer, The Canadian Brass, Raffi, Shawn Colvin, Quartette and Paul Brandt).  Below is a version of that song, performed during a concert with the Boston Pops Orchestra (which I have fond memories of watching on PBS with my folks during the holidays as a child).