I knew ....

.... Mary and Baby Jesus were the starring roles ....

.... and of course the Angel was too.

But I had no idea how important the sheep were ....

.... until Ella and Zoe performed

in their first Christmas Pageant this past Sunday.

I also did not know Ella was disappointed in the sheep costume until she told me she thought it would be more 'fluffy', and that she thought she'd have hooves.

But I did know Zoe LOVED wearing her sheep costume so much that she wore it all evening after the dress-rehearsal last Friday.

I also did not know how tight the sheep ears headband was until Zoe said to me (two hours into wearing the ears) 'mommy, it hurts to be a sheep.'.

And I did not know Ella really, really wanted to be an angel until she told me; but was thankful she was okay with my explanation that the angels were played by older girls.

I also did not know that one of the angels was the girls' age until the morning of the program. It took a while for Ella to move on from that.

But having Grama Dianne, Grampa Lindy and Auntie Jen over ....

..... totally made everything 100% happy.

So happy that Zoe wanted her own picture of herself with Grampa and her little blue seal ....

.... and I loved spending extra time with my sister : )

And this just makes me laugh:

Since being in the program the girls have been acting out the Baby Jesus story a lot. This is what I overheard Ella say to Zoe yesterday: 'But Zoe, I don't want to be Joseph again. He doesn't do anything.'.