The Traveling Banana: Week with the Woodrows: Friday

Friday! Yeah! So close to the weekend! Also the youth group Christmas party! :D

Damarise and Bethy made sugar cookies to decorate once the youth arrived.

Food colouring.

The cookie cutters.

Damarise and Bethy. My beautiful sisters!

The Maddux brought over these adorable colours for the icing. Theirs are all the neonish colours! SO cute!

Annie's cookies turned out SO cute!

Esther decorating :)

Me.

Sarah.

Ian.

Everyone decorating.

Bethy's turned out SO cute!

All the cookies.

All morning Gracie planned out a scavenger hunt. It was amazing! Every clue we would get we would be like, "Wow! Gracie did an AMAZING job putting this together!" There were three teams who did different stuff, but I'll just say what the team Damarise, Bethy and I were on did.

Everyone started out by the Woodrow's hospital where Gracie told us that we were shepherds who had just seen the angels and heard about the birth of the Messaiah, but unfortunately for us, we are slightly deaf and it's a windy night so we didn't hear everything that the angels said, like where the Messaiah was! Oh no! So we started off with our clue looking for the Messaiah. Damarise, Bethy and I headed off to get our blanket, but our next clue said that, whoops, we had left it on the clothesline. We found it and the next clue, which sent us to the gates of the big house (Their house) We arrived at the gates and found our clue. We had to say, "We awaitest at thine gates." before someone would come to the gate. After a while Kent arrived at the gate, before anyone would speak to use we had to say, "How dost thou fare?" Once we asked Kent that he let us in. We asked if he knew where the Messaiah was. He didn't and gave us our next clue. We had to walk down the hallway to where the Scribe was. We knocked on the door and asked the question before Benaiah the Scribe let us in. When we came in we asked Benaiah, who was sitting at a desk studying the Bible, if he knew where the Messaiah was to be born. He held up the Bible to us and said, "You must search the Scriptures!" We took the Bible and found our next clue. It told us that Benaiah was acting a bit suspicious and we should keep an eye on him. Hehe, Benaiah was then supposed to leave and drop a clue for us, since we would be watching him. But we kinda took it to seriously, when Benaiah tried to leave I wouldn't let him leave the room. Haha, sorry buddy! Bethy finally said, "Well, maybe he's supposed to leave." Duh! She's so smart! Benaiah left and dropped our clue which said to ask the Page where the midwife was because she would know what babies have been born recently. We went to the Page which was Kent and asked him about where the Midwife was. He pointed us to the carpenter's shop where Aunt Julie was sitting there. Damarise, Bethy and I walked in, said our greeting and Aunt Julie asked, "Ohhh, are you all here because you need a midwife?" Haha! We started cracking up! After asking her about any new births she told us that no one had been by for weeks asking her to be their midwife, but she said we should check with her husband the Census man. Off we went, with our next clue in hand, to find the Census man. As we were leaving the carpenter's shop we noticed a clue hanging up outside. We decided it must be for later so we would get it then. Off we went. We came to the church and inside was Uncle Charles the Census man. :P We asked him if he knew where a little baby boy was. He wouldn't answer us and mouthed the word baby. Ohh we realized, he's mute! Well we kept asking him about a baby but no reply. Then we thought that maybe he's deaf too. So we started to sign language. Haha, he cracked up! Then we thought, "You know what? I bet something on that clue hanging outside of the carpenter's shop would help us get what we are wanting. Maybe something that we need to ask him!" So, we apologized and told him sorry but we'd be right back! Haha, we all ran out of the church only to hear Uncle Charles clapping his hands. We marched back in and Uncle Charles gave us our clue. (Whoops we realized we were supposed to be asking for a pregnant lady :P ) Our next clue was to go to the inn and see if the pregnant lady that the Census man had seen earlier was there. We went to the inn keeper, Benaiah, who told us that they had been by, but he had no room for them in the inn, so he sent them to a stable. Off we went back by the hospital site where the Smoker's containers were and in there we found the Messaiah. Well, a picture of Mary, Joseph and Jesus :) After we found the Messaiah we had to go tell everyone that we'd found the Messaiah. It was fun! :D And Gracie did an AMAZING job coming up with all of that in one morning! Way to go Gracie! It was fun to do and kept us reminded of the Christmas story at the same time!

While we were outside doing this, it was raining! So when we came back in Aunt Julie made us hot chocolate! Mmmm thanks!

Sarah, Esther, and Annie! Cute!

The guys.

Awww... Esther's present bag to Annie was the cutest.

Gracie passed out all the gifts. Thanks Gracie! :D

Hehe, Gracie made Ian a light saber for Christmas. Haha! What a great idea!

Riley and Kent got hats.

Annie got headbands and gum :D

Esther got a bunch of lil' stuff, like nail polish, pencils, cute bag and other stuff. :)

Sarah got a bunch of lil' stuff from the Sunday Feira that she has been wanting. It was cute! And Kent put verses on each gift that had something to do with the gift. It was a neat idea!