but Alexander is going to play Tiny Tim in the Christmas pageant at school! I stayed home with the three youngest this morning while Rich took the boys to school, so Rich heard the news first. He told me that the third and fourth grade teacher pulled Alexander aside in the hall and said she needed to speak with him. He said it sounded like he was in trouble, and Rich was trying to figure out how he had gotten in trouble with another class's teacher, it also looked to him as though Alexander were trying to decipher that himself. She said that she had been impressed with his projection as one of the Magi last year, and wanted him to be Tiny Tim. I am so excited!

We need to hurry up and finish reading The First Four Years and get started on A Christmas Carol. Fortunately, as a Christian school, they won't be knocking out the religion and the piety of the story, and particularly this character, as the movies have mostly done. Of course, in our area, it's only the private schools that could put this play on at all, since it was banned from several of the public schools for being too religious a text to even be present in the school building.

Anyway, this all reminds me that we still need to scan the boys' school pictures, so you can see them looking handsome in their birthday sweaters.

P.S. For all the shrieking about overpopulation, 12 schools in our area have been shut down (with more scheduled) because there aren't enough children living in our state to warrant keeping them open and paying the staff.

P.P.S. At least six of those schools are in "crowded" Seattle and the other six are in another larger city, lest anyone think I am speaking of rural or suburban areas.