A star is born…

For five of the past six years, one of our three older children has attended the same preschool.

Every December, they put on the same Christmas program. It’s a sweet little re-telling of the Christmas story with the 3- to 5-year-olds singing songs like, “Bells are Ringing”, “Happy Birthday, Jesus”, and “What Did the Cow at the Manger Say?”. (OK, that’s not really the title of the song, but anyway…)

Each year, the classes are divided up into two groups: half are angels and the other half are shepherds. A few select students are chosen to play the roles of the angel Gabriel, Mary and Joseph and the three wisemen.

Our oldest son was an angel two years in a row. Our second son was an angel one year and then a shepherd.

Oh, but this year? THIS YEAR?!?!

Oh, yeah. Guess who was Mary?

Could I possibly have been more proud of my preschooler?

And Joseph was played by none other than her buddy from church. OK. I know it’s hard to imagine that two little actors who have zero lines could actually put on more than the same average performance of every Mary and Joseph from year’s past.

But I must tell you that these two were fabulous.

They took their job very seriously. They rang their bells right on cue.

They hopped on their broom horse when they were supposed to.

They pulled out the doll baby Jesus and placed him in the manger without any reminders.

They remembered all of their sign language motions for the songs. They sang loud and clear. Very loud. And very clear.

And they even added a few of their own motions to jazz up some of the songs.

It was the best. Christmas. pageant. EVER. OK… at least I thought so. And I could be a little biased. Just a little.

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