Rush to the Middle: Christmas Activity Advent Week #2

I was awful at taking pictures this week, even worse than normal, so the photographic evidence of what we did is minimal, at best. But we still had fun, pictures be darned!

One day this week we sorted through the boys' toys to find some to donate to the church nursery, in anticipation of the new toys Santa would bring. We do this every year (though last year we did a much bigger purge earlier on because we were trying to sort/pack/sell EVERYTHING) as a seasonal service activity. The boys did great: J was very efficient and stayed on task, while E really just wanted to play with the "new" toys he rediscovered along the way! The rule is that we say "keep or go" about every item and if one boy says go, the other has to agree or it stays. E wanted to keep everything, not because he is particularly attached to too many things, but because he didn't want to have to look up from playing long enough to say go. Surprisingly, given his hoarder-in-training tendencies, J wanted to get rid of lots of things; he was a decluttering maniac! After all our sorting, we ended up with two whole bags of toys in great condition to donate and a half a bag of thrashed/broken toys we simply threw away. Pretty good work, if I do say so!

Here we are post-sorting and still smiling!

We attended the Doha Singers, Doha Orchestra, and Doha Youth Singers concert as well this week, which was very festive, if a bit haphazard (we went to the early show, which one of the singers we know later referred to as "our dress rehearsal"--apparently they got some of the kinks worked out for the evening show!). They boys really liked the concert, though it was quite long and the orchestra, the least interactive section, was last, so they had a hard time staying interested at the end. But the singing was fun, and made even more exciting by the realization that their music teacher from school is the choir director and E's teacher from last year is in the Doha Singers (who knew?). I think we will definitely go back every year if we can.

The other highlight of the week was our visit to the singing sand dunes. These dunes outside Doha are HIGH and really fun to slide down, though a beast to hike up. Playing on them feels like you are playing in water, really, which is an odd sensation. And, of course, as I found out when one ran across my hand, you may run into the occasional skink! The boys LOVED the dunes, even if it wasn't really windy enough to hear them "sing." We also had a church party at the base of the dunes, a potluck with a little nativity put on by the kids, so I whipped up some no-sew shepherd costumes for the boys and two friends in the morning before we left. The costumes turned out great, I think, though I'm not sure how we ended up with such patriotic shepherds in red, white, and blue! J picked the colors; he had very definite ideas about how he wanted to look; what can I say?