Recharging

I discovered Cooper napping yesterday afternoon. I feel like this picture is a good representation of how the whole week has gone. We've had lots of napping, more screen time than usual, and very little is getting accomplished. We did go see a movie (Wonka) on Wednesday, but that's the only adventure we've had.

I'm not complaining, It's nice to have some downtime.

Maybe after all this resting we'll be full of energy for the new year.

Walkabout

Cooper and Peter have been taking care of our neighbor's pets for a week now. Before they left, our friends mentioned that Topher might enjoy helping walk the dog at least one day. It's been rainy and cold and I've been too tired to accompany them (I wasn't comfortable with the big boys walking both the dog and the Topher). But today it was only a little rainy and it was much warmer, so Topher and I helped walk the dog.

He was pleased.

Christmas Day in the Morning

Bryan is the official Christmas photographer, so I usually ignore my phone while we're enjoying our morning. This year I snapped a few pictures before discarding the phone. Since it takes a few days to get Bryan's pictures (he told me he took 600 just while we opened presents), I'll share the few that I have.

Here's a glimpse at our Christmas morning, including the aftermath.

All the Traditions

Our Christmas Eve started with our final choir practice and performance of the year. When we ran through our last song before church started I reminded them that our most important job was to bear our testimonies of the Savior through song. They sounded beautiful and I was holding back tears while I conducted. 

Our whole family, minus Topher, sang with the choir. Sophie and Topher sang with the primary kids. Sophie even got to play a bell and sing a solo descant part. And Bryan and I were able to sing the soprano and bass parts in a quartet of Still, Still, Still. I love celebrating Christmas through song.

After church we jumped right into cooking. While I made cranberry sauce and bread, Bryan made the most delicious Christmas Eve soup he's made yet.

After dinner we all opened our traditional Christmas pajamas and watched A Muppet Christmas Carol. Well, some of us watched it. Peter and Cooper had to leave partway through the movie to take care of a neighbor's animals, Bryan was coming down with a terrible cold and slept instead of watching, and then Topher announced he was ready for bed so I took him upstairs to sleep. We all started the movie, but only Phoebe and Sophie finished it.

And then, despite being surprisingly organized and prepared, Bryan and I were still up until 1 o'clock in the morning. I guess that's just the nature of Christmas Eve when you have kids.

The Work of Christmas

The Work of Christmas

by Howard Thurman

When the song of the angels is stilled,

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flocks,

The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry,

To release the prisoner,

To rebuild the nations,

To bring peace among the people,

To make music in the heart.

The Best Way to Spread Christmas Cheer

I loved four of the five songs our choirs sang at the concert. I was just okay with one of them, but it was the favorite Christmas song for some of our musicians, so I added it to the lineup. And it's the song that gave us the most trouble! Let this be a lesson to all choir directors: only pick songs you absolutely love.

These are not our recordings, but they do at least share what songs we performed. And there's nothing like Christmas music centered on the Savior to prepare for Christmas.

The children sang:

Sing We Now of Christmas

When Love Was Born

The adults sang:

Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella (We sang it in English, but this is the arrangement we used. And yes, this was the problem song.)

Shine for Me Again, Star of Bethlehem

Children, Go Tell It On the Mountain (This song was SO FUN! It was also so much work, but it was highly rewarding work. And our pianist was AMAZING!)

Sing We All Noel

The busiest part of our weekend happened on Sunday night. Or rather, the part of the weekend that required the most work was on Sunday night. We had our annual interfaith concert. We hosted last year and I was essentially responsible for organizing it. (I realized that I never wrote about it, probably because I was exhausted and overwhelmed and then we had Christmas and COVID and it fell by the wayside.) 

This year we were simply participants. In some ways this was more stressful. I like to plan ahead and have details like date and location figured out early on. Due to some personnel changes at the church that hosted, we didn't have a firm date or location announced until a few weeks before the event took place. There was even some question as to whether or not the concert would happen. Thankfully, it all came together.

There were four music groups that participated: our ward choir, the children's choir that I co-run, a trio from a local Greek Orthodox church, and the Lutheran church that hosted the event. We were the opening act. The hosting music director was new this year and I don't think he expected our choir to be so big. We had thirty singers there on Sunday night, a wonderful group representing our relatively small congregation. Our run through beforehand had been great. But our first number for the actual performance was kind of a mess. The acoustics in the room made it difficult for the pianist and the singers to hear each other. We recovered and our next two songs were much better.

I went from leading the first group to turning the pianist's pages for the second group. Being the page turner is actually more stressful for me than conducting! If I mess up as the conductor I can get back on track pretty quickly. But if I mess up as the page turner everything falls apart. I very nearly had a stumble, but at the last second I discovered I was holding two sheets of paper between my fingers instead of one and flicked them apart, so no harm was done. The kids did a great job.

Because the concert was broadcast on the church's Facebook page, I didn't have anyone record it. I wish I had. The audio on the stream was kind of garbled and doesn't represent how the choir actually sounded. Thankfully Bryan recorded the kids' choir at least. He was singing with the ward choir, otherwise I'm sure he would have recorded that as well.

After all the hard work of getting ready, now I'm kind of sad that we won't be singing those Christmas songs again. Well, we'll sing one of them this coming Sunday, but two of them were only for the concert. Bryan and I are in the process of figuring out how to get a good recording once all the choir members are back from their Christmas vacations.

And I didn't take any pictures that night. Thankfully, my friend took a very important one and sent it to me. The Friday before the concert I sent an invitation into school with Topher and invited his kindergarten teacher. She was also Sophie's kindergarten teacher and another girl in Topher's class sings with the kids' choir, so this teacher had three students performing. And she came! She's really one of the best teachers my children have had and we're so thankful that Topher is in her class. She was so sweet and effusive with her praise of the kids. The next day at school she invited Topher and his friend to talk to the class about the concert they had sung in the night before.

Trek to the Temple

Early on Saturday morning Bryan and the oldest three kids drove an hour and a half into Manhattan to attend the Temple. We had hoped to go as a family, but Topher had started coughing in the night, so I stayed home with the younger two. While we missed having an adventure, we're so thankful the others were able to be in the Temple.

The Perils of Spring

"I'm sad my birthday is when all the bees come out." -Topher, while playing a computer game about the different months of the year.

So Many Concerts

We had a very full weekend. It began with our second and final ukulele orchestra performance of the Christmas season. We played at a library Christmas singalong. Most of our audience members were elementary aged kids in their pajamas. Bryan brought our kids to support us.

Right after that Sophie and I rushed over to the intermediate school to cheer on a friend she's known since we moved to Pennsylvania. We failed to take a picture at our performance, so we took a seat selfie before her friend's concert started.

Christmas Cookies

This week Topher and Sophie attended a cookie decorating activity at the library. The next day Sophie decorated cookies for Activity Days. In other words, we have a lot of frosting covered sugar cookies at our house right now.

Sing We Now of Christmas

We've got our annual interfaith Christmas concert this Sunday evening. It's not our year to host, we're just participants this time. We're bringing our ward choir and our children's choir. Both groups have put in a lot of work in preparation. On Sunday we positioned everyone so they would know where to stand for the performance. I realized if I didn't take a picture none of us would remember.

You'll notice we have several small singers. They are very sweet and sometimes they sing.

Lovely Weather for a Sleigh Ride Together With You

Saturday was a full day and it ended with our annual tradition of going on a sleigh ride with some friends. We happened to pick one of the busiest nights of the season for this city. The traffic was kind of intense, but we made it and found a place to park. The best part was singing Christmas carols with friends while looking at all the Christmas lights downtown. The second best part was that it had been a warmish day (which means I was a comfortable temperature in my hat and scarf and coat and gloves rather than freezing in spite of them) and the impending rain held off until the next morning.

Strum Along

This year Sophie and I joined the ukulele orchestra at our local library. It's a very low stress group and lots of fun. We had our first public performance this past Saturday. Bryan brought the other kids to come watch us play and sing Christmas songs. We played for nearly an hour and, though my fingers were a little raw, we had a great time.

Reindeer or Viking?

Topher: Mom, will you take the thing off this bow? 

Me: Why?

Topher: So I can stick it to my nose.

Me: Why do you want to do that?

Topher: So I can be Rudolph the Red!

Grown Ups Are Boring

Bryan took a few days off of work this week. We spent today doing the things we normally can't when the kids are home. We:

• took a nap
• went out to lunch
• went shopping, just the two of us

And we counted all of it as a date. It may seem boring, but we thought it was swell.

On the Risers

Tonight it was Phoebe's turn to sing. She's part of the middle school chorus and has been singing with them a few mornings each week since school started. Tonight we sat in nearly the same seats we sat in last week for Sophie's concert and listened to the chorus, the orchestra, the chamber strings, and the band. They did a great job!

Aside from Phoebe's songs, my favorite was a piece from Vivaldi's Winter. Topher was getting antsy at that point and I told him what the song was called and asked if it sounded like winter. We agreed that we could hear the snow storm in the music.

First Snow of the Season

 

Dictation

I haven't talked too much on here about some of the health things that I deal with. I do my best to manage them and choose not to highlight them, at least in written form. But today I have been hit so hard with some of my symptoms that Bryan is kindly transcribing this post while I huddle under the covers. my arms too weak to type. He's even filling in the correct words when the brain fog is so thick that I say the wrong thing.

Tonight I'm really thankful for Bryan. and all of the stuff that he jumped in and did today without being asked. I know he doesn't like praise (and I'm sure it makes him very uncomfortable to type them while I say them) but I'm really thankful for him, and all that he does. I'm especially grateful that he doesn't feel put out when my energy fails me, even though I have a tendency to get angry at myself with these health challenges that I can't control. 

So thanks Bryan. I'll try to type my own post tomorrow.

In Silhouette

About a month ago I got a call from a friend at church asking if I would help with something for the Ward Christmas party. She had seen a nativity done in silhouette set to a Christmas version of Leonard Cohen's song Hallelujah. She wondered if I could put together something like that for our ward. I said I was happy to help and she sent me this video of what she wanted.

She liked the original, except for the ending. She didn't want the nativity to end with the crucifixion. I agreed and started brainstorming an alternate ending. When I met with the Activities Committee to explain our concept I suggested that we could just rewrite the words to that verse. This suggestion was met with some shock from the members of the Committee. I guess changing lyrics wasn't something they had done before. I said it wouldn't be a big deal and they agreed that could work. 

The engineers in the group took on the task of building the screen, one of the women with a theatre background volunteered to do the props and costumes, and the head of the committee said she'd send out messages to everyone to set our rehearsals. That left me the task of rewriting the last verse and planning the blocking. Those were my favorites jobs, so I was happy.

I listened to the original Christmas version several times and decided that I was bothered by more than just the last verse. Not all of the phrases fit the music and I wanted to expand some of the concepts. So instead of changing the last verse I wrote three new verses for the beginning and heavily changed the other three verses. We dropped the last verse altogether and used a quote from President Russell M. Nelson instead. Bryan was a major help with the rewrite. He gets credit for most of the Joseph verse and the line about "a bursting inn" in the fourth verse.

Once it was written, we had to stage it. We had exactly two rehearsals, one the week before and one the day of the performance, and only about thirty minutes with the whole cast. The night before that second rehearsal I typed up the staging notes from the week before (I was thankful for the woman that wrote down all the direction I was handing out!) and decided to add the present day silhouettes during the final quote. I really wanted to bring the Savior's story and example to our day and that seemed like a good solution. The actors during that section are actually the singers! They were the only performers who were in modern clothes and I couldn't take the time for costume changes for the other actors. They were good sports to jump in and do it in the eleventh hour.

Speaking of the musicians, while I directed the actors, they put together the song. At the beginning of our first rehearsal I handed them the words I'd finished writing the night before, told them my general idea for how it might go, told them I trusted them, and left them to it. I knew the pianist had brought a piano solo version of the song that she already had. It was only after the rehearsal was over that I discovered the song she had was in the wrong key for our two Primary kid singers. The pianist found the key that worked best for them, wrote out the chords, then put my words to notes and sent us all sheet music a few days later. She's pretty fantastic.

Our church building doesn't have a stage, just a big gym that can be divided into three equal sections. We created a stage by closing the accordion doors of the third section partway and attaching the massive bedsheet on its PVC pipe frame to the doors. When we were staging the nativity I noticed two problems. The actors didn't want to get too close to the curtain (which in turn made their shadows bigger than we wanted) and they weren't always aware when they were visible and when they were still hidden behind the doors. The woman that did the costumes and props suggested that we tape numbers on the floor, actual marks, for the actors to stand on. That would get them close enough to the curtain so the shadows were the correct size and it would ensure that they were on stage all the way. I told her I thought it was brilliant and we used the idea.

If you watch the original version and our updated rendition you'll see that I did pull some ideas that they used. I had a theatre professor in college that liked to say, "You're only as good as the people you steal from." When you're directing, that's true. But I did put my own spin on it. I think my favorite change was during the Wise Men verse. I knew that I didn't want to use a baby doll to represent Jesus because he was a young child when the Wise Men found him, not a baby. But I hadn't figured out a fix by the time I needed to stage it. The sweet couple that played Mary and Joseph had brought their three little boys to our first practice. When it came time to block that verse I looked over at the boys while they entertained themselves and inspiration struck. I asked the parents if one of the boys wanted to be in the nativity. They said yes, the oldest (who is a very young and small five year old) had expressed interest. So on the spot he was cast as Jesus as a young child. He took direction better than some of the big kids and was calm backstage, which was amazing.

During that second practice I noticed that each actor had two shadows, a strong one and a second lighter one. I went backstage to figure out where the second light source was. One of the engineers that had built the screen frame figured it out. The main bright light was reflecting off the shiny gym floor which created another shadow! Thankfully that's the room we use for Primary and they have long gray rugs that they roll out to quiet the kids' noisy feet. A few people quickly put the rugs out and the double shadow problem vanished!

Because we'd only had two practices I knew that the actors might struggle to remember their blocking. I decided to print two copies of the script as 18" x 24" blueprints. Before our second rehearsal I stapled a script to each side of the backstage area. The actress that played Mary asked if she could highlight her part. I thought it was a good idea and could help the others as well. Between the practice and the performance I found every color of highlighter we had at home. When we arrived for the party that night I spent time backstage highlighting everyone's stage direction, each character in their own color. As we were getting ready to start the performance I saw several of the participants reviewing the wall scripts, so I think they helped.

The Christmas party started with the kids visiting with Santa in a different room (I appreciated the effort to separate Santa from the retelling of the birth of the Savior), then dinner, then the nativity. Near the end of the dinner we gathered our performers for costumes and final blocking reviews. I had to continually remind the kids to only touch their own props and to definitely not move anyone else's prop. What I didn't realize was that I also should have told them not to spin their own props through the air. Moments before we were supposed to start one of our stars (we had one for each side of the stage) was spun so much that it went flying and broke when it met the floor. Our amazing prop woman grabbed the painters tape she'd used to put numbers on the floor and put the star back together.

And with that excitement, we began. I'm pleased with how it turned out. Oh, and I'm not the only member of my family who was at those rehearsals. Peter played the stage right wall (his hair has gotten so long that he had to pull it into a bun so it didn't fall in his face and show up in the silhouette) and Phoebe and Sophie played the angels. They all were wonderful! And don't worry, none of them broke the star.

Bryan was tasked with recording our final product. He said the best, and only unobstructed, view was from under the table we had sat at to eat our dinner. Big thanks to Bryan for lying on his belly under a table to take this video. For some reason it won't go to full screen here, but if you open it in YouTube it should give you the option to fill the screen.

All Buttoned Up

This sweet boy felt very accomplished this morning after he buttoned up his shirt without any help. This is the first time he's managed this. Hooray for wins, no matter the size!

Edit: I just found a post on the blog from nearly two years ago that said he had buttoned his shirt by himself for the first time. The difference is that that time he buttoned it inside-out. So this is the first time he's done it right-side-out!

Sing Out Strong

Sophie has been practicing with her elementary school chorus since September. Tonight we attended their holiday concert. They did a great job! It's a huge group with just over one hundred kids, the stage was packed. Sophie was so fun to watch! Her face was expressive and she clearly was having a grand time performing. Topher had gone to the concert yesterday that the kids put on for their classmates. I could hear him singing along and sometimes he would also do their arm choreography. In other words, he was a big fan.

I'm excited for their concert in the spring!

Brrrrrrrrr

It was 22 degrees when we left the house this morning. I didn't mind that we'd missed the bus because I didn't want to get out of my car to wait at the busstop. The warmest it got all day was 32 degrees. I made dinner tonight while wearing my jacket and scarf. It wasn't that cold inside my house, I just couldn't warm up from having been outside.

And Cooper still didn't think it was cold enough to wear a jacket.

A girl from church threatened bodily harm if he didn't put his coat on. He finally complied but insisted it really wasn't that bad.

I do not understand this.

He's Elusive

I have taken soooooooo many pictures that it can be difficult to search for pictures that have our entire family, there are simply too many photos to sift through. Except! I realized that Bryan does not love having his picture taken, so if he shows up in a photograph there's a good chance it contains the rest of us as well. And now I know that if I want to locate a family picture amongst the thousands on my Google Photos, I just need to search for Bryan.

And that is my life hack for the day. This tip won't help anyone else, but it definitely saved me some time this morning.

Merry and Bright

Giving Thanks

Our Thanksgiving day was extra special because Bryan's youngest brother Spencer drove all the way from Indianapolis to visit! I was so focused on cooking and visiting with him that I took very few pictures. Even without photographic evidence, it was a wonderful holiday.

Bryan and I spent most of the day cooking. Spencer helped with the sweet potatoes and with entertaining kids in the backyard. The meal was delicious!

Not pictured: six pumpkin pies (I decided to cut back this year and not make as many), one razzleberry pie, one key lime pie, one chocolate pie, and one apple cobbler.

After all the cooking and eating were finished, we played a few rounds of MarioKart. And by we, I mean not me. I was busy dozing on Bryan's shoulder.

This was taken just before I fell asleep.

After MarioKart we gathered back in the kitchen for dessert. I had failed to take a picture during dinner and only remembered to take this one after most people were finished eating their sweets. They were good sports and came back into the kitchen.

I'm thankful for this family of mine, both immediate and extended. And I'm thankful for a holiday focused of gratitude!

The Hero We Need

Topher was given the homework assignment to help his turkey make it to Christmas by disguising it. This was Topher's solution.

Happy Thanksgiving from Super Turkey!

Right Until the End

Sophie and Topher spent a morning before school last week writing this song. We recorded it just before we left for the bus that day. I love that they want to be BFFs right until the end.

Artistic Distractions

Sometimes when Phoebe is supposed to be doing her math homework, she draws instead.