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.