I Just Made a lot of Women look Amazing in their Husband's Eyes

In case you were wondering, Matt agreed to be Joseph. There were three conditions:

• I couldn't take any pictures of him at the event. (so there are none included here)
• I wasn't allowed to tell friends to come watch. (damn. but my friend Micha did make up for this by sending a timely text message as we were putting on our costumes.)
• I have to go see some stupid movie that I don't want to see. (which I don't think is that fair because I only asked him to spend 20 minutes doing something he didn't want to do.)

So on Friday night, we all showed up at church to participate in the live nativity. I had been gone for a week in El Salvador (which I will discuss at another time) so Jack was super excited to see me when I got home. Maybe a little too excited because during the show he kept trying to nurse. In front of everyone. I spent most of the 20 minute "performance" trying to make him sit up because he kept leaning back with all his strength so that he could root around. 

Awkward.

And speaking of 20 minutes, it didn't exactly go as planned. I had promised Matt that it was only 20 minutes but when we walked out into the stable and sat there "acting" for a few minutes we noticed that things couldn't possibly be going as planned because nothing was happening. After about 5 minutes of sitting there amongst some live animals (sheep, goats, a horse that was playing the part of a donkey), the person in charge of the event came out and told us that they were having technical difficulties and we would need to come back and start over. 

Matt was thrilled.

So we went backstage and waited around for a few minutes while they tried to work out the technical issues.  This is when things started to go downhill for us because Avery, who had been patiently waiting with the other angels, was losing her patience and only wanted to be with us. But we were the Holy Family so it didn't really work from a historical perspective to walk out holding both the baby Jesus and an angel. We were just trying to respect the historical accuracy of the event so we really couldn't give in to her demands. I mean, I have heard the Christmas story about a hundred times and it never once mentioned Mary and Joseph having a toddler together in the form of an angel before Jesus was born. So we left her on the hip of some poor unsuspecting shepherd while we started the show again.

Finally Matt, Jack and I went back out to the set of the stable with the live animals. Unfortunately for us the goat didn't realize that the show had paused and he should probably stop eating the hay because after about 3 minutes on "take two" of the show the goat puked right behind Matt. Then the angels came out to stand behind us and the little girl who was supposed to stand by the goat refused (on account of the puke, I assume). After that Avery started crying out for Matt to hold her. He tried ignoring her because her request just didn't make any sense in the context of the stable scene, but she wouldn't let it go. Matt eventually let her sit on his lap so that people in the audience could actually hear the narration.

(Meanwhile Jack is trying to nurse during this whole thing. Every time I sat him up he thrust himself backwards and leaned right in. I am sure I had saliva marks on my "Mary" outfit. I feel bad for the woman who had to put it on after me.)

So if you rolled up to my church on Friday night around 6:30pm you saw Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus trying to nurse over Mary's outfit, an angel sitting on Joseph's lap and a goat that puked up hay. I'm sure the folks there to watch felt exactly like they were back at that stable in Bethlehem over 2000 years ago. 

So ladies... you're welcome. I am sure that I have made it so that you can pretty much get away with anything you ask of your husband because if he ever refuses you can just recall the time when I convinced Matt to dress as Joseph in front of a bunch of strangers, some farm animals with weak stomachs, a crying kid, and a baby that missed his mama while she was away.