"And the stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there..."

Merry Christmas everyone, here are a few scenes from around my house today, Christmas Eve.

Above is our living room fireplace and below is a close up of the manger with Baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all the folks and animals that came to see him.

And on that night all of the animals were blessed with the ability to talk,
they too came to share the blessing of the new born king.

It is beginning to look alot like Christmas around our house, the tree is up, the lights are in the windows and around the backyard fence. We still have some wrapping to do and some cooking for the big day, but mostly just relaxing and enjoying the holiday season.
I visited Mom today and dropped off her gifts, along with some of the large amount of chocolate that I received from students this week. I am humbled by the outpouring of support by The Villa families as a new teacher in the Middle School, and also by the support of the faculty as well.
The vacation week will be filled with visits to and from relatives as well as some catch up on correcting papers and planning for Math and Science over the month of January.
This week was pretty funny at school, progress reports went out on Monday, some with attachments of missing or late work. On Tuesday I experienced "The Miracle of Missing Work" as homework and assignments magically appeared out of lockers and notebooks to accumulate onto my desk.
Since it was the week before Christmas, I was able to read some of my Christmas related books to students in my classes, two of the books were written by my friend Ellen Obed and the kids were amazed that I knew such a good author.  The books by Ellen are Who would like a Christmas tree? Which tells the story of a Christmas tree plantation and all of the wildlife that would like a Christmas tree during each month of the year.  The funnies part was when I read it to the sixth graders and we got to November and the book says that turkeys want the Christmas tree in November, and "there are 18 turkeys in our flock" and I said "just like the 18 sixth graders" to a chorus of "HEY!!" and giggles.
The other story was Borrowed Black the story of a being who "borrows, but doesn't give back" and how he borrows the Moon and then some brave characters take it back. It is a good story about how the Moon got its cracks and as one student said "how not to be greedy." We are studying the Moon right now so it is a good opener to the Moon related mythology that they will be reading about after vacation.
On Thursday we had a great Christmas Mass at school with all grades attending.  Father Gerry from St. Lawrence Church in town always does a great children's sermon that ties in what the kids are learning in religion to the everyday events around them. It was nice to see several families attend the Mass along with their kids.
I'm looking forward to a restful vacation and refueling my batteries for the Snowshoe club which I'll be helping to coach in January.

Getting ready for Christmas, we put our lights outside last weekend on the deck, porch and along the dog fence.  We're still having one line short out on us in the rain, will have to fix that up a bit.
This week has been strange in weather, warm earlier in the week then very cold and windy followed by three days of rain.  The dogs are bored but we've been taking them out for their regular walks, with coats on when raining hard, this keeps me in shape too.

Today I put the Christmas candles in the windows and will check out the Christmas tree tomorrow to see if we can get one more year out of it, or if we are going with a real tree this year.  A real tree may be a challenge with Blue the dog, he likes to pee on balsams and better not if we do get a real one!!

I am looking forward to the Christmas vacation and hope that we have some good snow before then.  I volunteered to help out with snow shoeing at my school one day a week starting after the vacation until the snow goes.  This should be interesting and fun with the kiddos, and good winter exercise too.  And potential good photo opportunities!!