More is Merrier

I always feel like I can breathe a bit easier after my choir's Christmas concerts!  It's such a busy time of year already, and when you add in two three-hour dress rehearsals and two concerts on a Saturday, it starts to feel insane.  And doing two concerts in one day is ALSO a lot!

But the rehearsals went well.  Especially on Thursday-- it was the first time in over a month where we were singing and I was like, "YES, THIS is what my voice is supposed to do!!!"  That was a delightful feeling.  Also, we were doing the song "Christmas Time is Here" from the Peanuts Christmas special, and I'd been struggling on the opening note-- starting out a song on a quiet "e" and on the very difficult "chr" sound of Christmas is a challenge!  But with my voice finally working, it was no problem!  What a relief!

And then, as if that hadn't been great enough, as I was driving home I saw the most amazing shooting star ever!  I mean-- if I hadn't known that there were meteor showers going on, I would have assumed that I'd seen a missile or a plane crashing, it was so bright and visible for several seconds.  I needed Craig to park the truck in the garage for me*, so since he was already joining me in the garage, we stood at the top of our driveway watching the night sky for another twenty minutes or so and saw four or five more shooting stars!  Two of them were just as amazing as that first one, and the others were still amazing in their own right.  It was an incredible night.

Anyway, Craig and the kids and his parents were all coming to the 2:30 concert.  I'd gotten tickets, but by the time I bought them there weren't a lot of seats (especially for 8 people all together!) but I got what I thought would be good ones-- it turns out they really couldn't see me at all because the Christmas trees were blocking their view!  So that was kind of a bummer.  Next year I'll make sure I buy the tickets earlier!

I think Craig got this by learning way over, and before the rows in front of me had filled in!

For the most part, the first concert was really great.  The only problem was when we got to Gloria by John Rutter, I got that awful tickle in my throat that you just can't get rid of.  I was dying, I was literally crying trying to not cough and wondering if I should try to unwrap one of the cough drops I'd tucked into my folder or just run off the stage.  Seriously, what do you do???  Fortunately, the ending of the first movement is really exciting and dramatic and the audience burst into applause and that gave me the moment I needed to cough and clear my throat and after that I was okay.  (And they didn't applaud after the second movement, so that was really my only chance!)  Phew.  That may have been one of the scariest things I've ever dealt with in a concert!

After the concert was done I chatted with my family for a bit and then they headed out.  I changed out of my concert dress and Leah and I went and got a very early dinner.  We'd been hoping to eat at Revolutionary Soup (doesn't that sound lovely on your throat between concerts?) but it's closed on Saturdays!  So we headed over to Bizou instead and shared everything: the bread plate (so delicious), beet & apple carpaccio (still really good, but in a healthy way), and autumn squash pappardelle.  I had no idea what that was, and was delighted to get a plate of biggest hand-made noodles I've ever seen in a delicious cream sauce.  So yummy.  And then we got ice cream from Chaps, of course.

Changed back into our dresses and it was time for the second concert!  This time I made it through the Rutter no problem, but I did start to get a tiny bit of a tickle during Joy (a gospel rendition of Joy to the World), but that was our second-to-last song, and I got through it all and was fine.  I think our second concert was even better than the first.  Hallelujah!

Sarah and her brother Kyle had come to the second concert so it was fun visiting with them and introducing Kyle to Michael (they're both the choral directors at their schools so they were excited to chat) and I learned that Kyle did what I think would be comparable to his master's thesis on Rutter's Gloria so he was thrilled to hear it again!  That made me happy.  It was a really lovely evening.  

There's always a big party after the concerts and I usually go, but I have to admit, I really don't enjoy parties like this.  Standing around trying to mingle with groups of people is not my thing.  I love SITTING with a few people chatting, but at parties like this I always worry that the person I'm talking to is feeling trapped and trying to get away from me to talk to someone else.  I'm not good at this kind of casual mingling.  So this year I gave myself permission to skip the party.  And once I was done visiting with Sarah and Kyle I just went home to Craig, who is the only person I ever really want to hang out with anyway.  

So Craig and I enjoyed sitting on the couch staring at the Christmas tree as I felt relieved that my concerts were over.

We needed to talk about what was going with the YW and YM.  The plan had been to go Christmas caroling Sunday evening but the forecast was for nothing but cold rain all evening.  Craig proposed that we switch that with the Tuesday end-of-year party, which made perfect sense.  Then he paused and gathered his courage before asking how I felt about hosting the end-of-year party.  I looked around the house.  It was still pretty clean from the seminary breakfast and (I hope!) from cleaning up before Grandma and Grandpa came.  So I sighed and agreed that we could host it.  As long as I still got my Sunday afternoon nap.

The party went great!  Craig put together a slide show of all the activities the youth did during the year (and if you remember our summer full of Trek, Camp, and High Adventure, it was a pretty big year!), we had all the cookies laid out on the dining room table so they could be packaged up to be given away, snacks in the kitchen, and air hockey in the basement, and then the youth were free to do whatever they wanted.  We had nearly 30 people here for it, and everyone seemed to have fun, so that's a raging success as far as I'm concerned.  Ryder even got a ton of other kids to play his new Werewolf game with him, so he was in heaven.  And then it dissolved into a nerf war, which is just perfect.

Kendra, Teagan, Liberty

Wylan and Jadyn

Monday I got to do to a work lunch (!!!) which was fun, and then in the afternoon we decorated sugar cookies from Adam:

Google collage cut out most of the cookies, but trust me, they were decorating cookies here...

And then on Tuesday, when it was cold and clear, the youth all went Christmas caroling and finally got to deliver all those cookies.  Craig and I tied ourselves up in knots trying to figure out the best routes and if we should be splitting into two groups or staying all together.  Finally we decided to stay together and only visit people in the Lake, but to ask the houses we were hitting up to warn a couple neighbors that we'd be caroling to them, too.  In this way, we managed to sing to 13 houses where everyone was home and seemed to have people singing on their doorstep, with minimal driving in between, and getting to our final destination, where hot cocoa waited for everyone, within 10 minutes of what we'd told parents!  A wild success!

This house was especially fun because the youth had come here in the spring to do service, so they remembered raking leaves here!

And finally, Craig decided to take all the priests (plus Topher) to the temple to do baptisms and I got to tag along.  They're a really great group of boys, it was a pleasure getting to hang out with them for a couple hours.  

Bentley, Wylan, Aaron, Topher, and Jesse

And then with Craig and Alec Johnson, one of their advisors, added in (Alec has the best hair of anyone in our ward!)

Yesterday I got to have a marathon lunch with Sarah at our favorite Tex-Mex restaurant halfway between our homes.  Today we've just been hanging out wrapping presents and making more treats since we've already eaten most of them.  The Huffs are on their way-- four of our kids line up pretty well in age and all get along really well, so they're a great family for us to hang out with. 

(Update: here are the older people, playing "Marrying Mr. Darcy" while the younger people watch Night at the Museum in the basement!  A fun time was indeed had by all!)

Tomorrow will be another temple trip, this time with the Sellers, so that will be gut-wrenching, but also I'm grateful that we've been invited to join them.  And then we'll squeeze in some more wrapping as part of the final mad rush of the holidays.

I love Christmas so much.  I hope you're enjoying a wonderful holiday, too!

*Did I mention that some guy hit Craig's truck after the adult session of stake conference?  Fortunately the man stuck around and has paid for all the repairs.  But it's still a huge pain-- getting parts these days is a nightmare, and meanwhile half the bumper is hanging off the back and the sensors are all whacked.  It makes backing into a tight space even harder!

😬