Choir concerts

This week shall hereby be known as The Week of Concerts. 

Last night we had our stake Christmas choir concert. My mom and Josie came to watch it with us and—surprise!—participate with us. We sang a beautiful arrangement of What Child is This? by Dave Fackrell and somehow I ended up being one of two altos in the choir which made me feel incredibly nervous. I'm a somewhat timid alto because I always sang soprano when I was younger. But I enjoy the challenge of learning the other parts, and besides...somebody's got to do it. 

Never have I been in a ward choir with such a dearth of altos!

The only other alto wasn't sure she would be able to make and told me that if she could she would definitely be late. You can imagine my horror when I looked at the program and saw that we were the very first number (that's what we get for being in the 1st ward)! So I asked my mom if she'd go up with me and then gave her a quick tutorial on the music, humming it quietly in our pew, before we went up to sing.

The other alto did, in fact, make it. Andrew said she walked in right before we went up. Phew!

So we had three altos to fourteen soporanos and I don't even know how many men (our choir has been oddly heavy in the bass clef recently, which is a wonderful problem to have). Those were much better odds.

I should add that we also had Rachel with us. She's been learning to sing alto as well, though she (self-admittedly) tends to flit back to the melody if she's not careful. It does take some ear training to get used to singing a different part. 

Anyway, it went well and I was grateful for my mom's support (for coming and for singing) and for Josie for watching the little ones on our bench and for Andrew for pacing the halls with a screaming Alexander while our choir was up. 

This evening was Miriam's school choir concert.

Christmas at the Riverwoods

Last night we went out for dinner as a family (the kids all brought home coupons for free kids meals), making it our second annual eat-at-Brick-Oven-and-then-visit-Riverwoods-for-Christmas-lights outing. We're just that good at traditions.*

The kids' meals came out promptly but the food for the grown ups took forever because somehow between filling the order for the kids' meals and finally filling the order for our meals, our "ticket got lost" so they just didn't ever make our food.** We waited for about an hour after the kids ate. 

Alexander was getting so hungry that he started eating crayons.

Old snow

Last year we only got snow a handful of times and although a few of those times were significant snowfalls, I don't recall it sticking around for very long. Not long enough to be old snow, at any rate. This season has been much snowier so far (which is a good thing for our reservoirs, I'm sure). 

It snowed on Sunday and the kids went sledding because they simply couldn't resist the snowy hill calling their name, even on the Sabbath day. Rachel even broke out the phrases, "bonding time" and "wholesome recreational activity," and volunteered to take Benjamin and Zoë to the hill by herself. So, yes, we let them go sledding on a Sunday.

And then we started our busy week and the snow sat and sat and sat, freezing and thawing and freezing and thawing but never quite melting because it didn't get warm enough for that this week. 

On Thursday we decided to go sledding again and the kids were pleasantly surprised at how awesome "old snow" is for sledding. They've never experienced "old snow" before. It's much more slippery than new snow, which makes sledding a much more slippery experience. 

They loved the going down parts of sledding. They did not like trying to climb back up the icy slope. Poor Zoë couldn't even manage it while carrying her sled so Rachel had to carry both their sleds up every time.

I didn't go sledding this time because I had Alexander strapped to my front and I didn't want to risk falling off a sled with him ("old snow" is much less forgiving in a fall than "new snow"). He was happy to watch with me.

Xander and Zo

We have a lot of long, sleepless nights over here (still) so it was so nice one morning this week (was it Thursday?)* when Andrew was able to get the kids off to school so that Alexander and I could sleep for a while. Those two things—Andrew being able to stay late enough to send the kids to school and Alexander sleeping in—happen so rarely together.

He'd settled Zoë in the basement, watching Frozen, so Alexander and I had to go hunting around the house for her when we woke up (shortly before 9:00). When we found her, Alexander squawked out in his baby language that he wanted to snuggle with her, so I put him down and he climbed up onto her lap and she held him. She was excited to "get a turn holding him," a privilege the older children have taken turns vying for since his birth, but which I've more or less loss control of because he has a mind of his own. Still, they always ask me, "Can I hold Alexander?"

"Ask him," I have to remind them because I can't just pass him off to anybody against his wishes (especially not in the middle of sacrament meeting) like I used to be able to do when he was a teeny weeny thing. 

Anyway, the stars aligned for these two yesterday (it was, in fact, just yesterday and apparently stars were aligning all over the place because I got to sleep in) and he wanted her to hold him and she wanted to hold him back.

Here are a few pictures of them snuggling while Frozen was finishing up:

 

Lunchtime oomph

"Let's have prayer, shall we?" I said, carrying lunch over to the table.

Alexander quickly folded his arms. He's so good at getting ready for prayer that we've started asking some anonymous sibling of his to follow his example (which is embarrassing for any of them, though I will just let you guess which sibling in particular I'm referring to).

"I'll say it!" Zoë volunteered, because she always volunteers (because she never gets to say the prayer, according to her, even though she probably gets to say the most prayers).

Then she said, "I prayed for Grandma to not die."

"You did," I said.

"But then she did. She died all the way."

"I know," I said, stroking her hair.

"That's sad," she said.

"It is," I agreed. "It is so sad."

"Why did Heavenly Father do that when I prayed for her to not die?"

"Well, because sometimes when we pray the answer is yes and sometimes the answer is no. Heavenly Father has a special plan for Grandma and a special plan for you. I guess part of his plan for Grandma was that he needed her home right away, and that's hard for us, but Heavenly Father will help us to be happy even though Grandma is gone because he loves us and he loves her and he knows that she loves us, too."

"But Heavenly Father is not here either!" she objected.

"But his love is," I assured her.

Someone described grief as an ebb and flow and I thought that was a wonderful depiction. I guess today Zoë's is flowing.

Lacking senses

Last night we sang Away in a Manger at the beginning of Family Night. Zoë decided that she needed to accompany us so she went over to the (electric) piano, turned it on, put on the headphones, and pounded away while we all sang.

When she was finished she came back to us all looking rather proud of herself.

"That was wonderful, thank you," I said.

Andrew, Rachel, and Miriam also offered their compliments.

"Very nicely done."

"Great playing."

"I loved it!"

Zoë beamed with pride.

Benjamin, however, started to cry.

"I didn't hear her play!" he whined. "I didn't hear anything."

"That's because only little boys who behave can hear the piano," Rachel quickly (and savagely) answered.

The first Monday of December

Trigger warning: This post discusses a recent suicide attempt on BYU campus.

"Thank goodness November is over! That was an awful month. December," Andrew declared, "will be calm and relaxing and normal. We've got this."

And with that he finished scraping off his car (because although he declared December calm, relaxing, and normal he couldn't exactly put a moratorium on the cold) and headed off into the world for the first workday of December.

I was surprised, about twenty minutes later, when I heard the garage door open.

"Forgot this!" he said, picking up his briefcase and waving it in the air. "So much for a good start to December. I'm supposed to meet with a student in ten minutes but I'm definitely going to be late for that appointment!"

And with that he was off again, chuckling to himself about how he had been the one to upset the calm, relaxing, normal beginning to December.

Little did we know, a calm, relaxing, normal December was not at all in the cards.

Miriam plays the organ at the tabernacle (and a not-so-false alarm)

Miriam has loved her organ class this semester. She loves her teacher, her TAs, her classmates. She loves practicing, she loves performing, and she's loved their field trips. It's been a wonderful experience for her. 

On Saturday we schlepped all the kids (and my mom) up to Salt Lake for Miriam's class field trip to the tabernacle. We were asked that no children under the age of eight come, which rather ruined our plans. So we decided that the little kids would wander around Temple Square with Daddy (looking at the nativities, checking out the visitors centers, and so forth) and my mom and I would accompany Miriam (Rachel stayed home with Grandpa so that she would be sure to make it to a birthday party she'd been invited to). 

I didn't understand why Andrew couldn't bring the kids in to listen to their sister play since the tabernacle is typically open to visitors, but we were told no kids so we listened. As it turns out, they totally could have come through the main doors to hear her play; we got to go up through the back entrance into the choir seats (which I'm assuming is particularly where they didn't want children).

It ended up not mattering because there wasn't any way we were going to bring the kids to a concert Saturday morning, anyway.

We woke them up around 6:30 so we could get ready to go. Zoë was out of sorts because she's not used to waking up quite that early. It was still dark out. That meant it was still night. What were we doing dragging her out of bed?! She yelled about her clothes. She yelled about breakfast. She yelled about getting buckled up in the car. Eventually she settled down, but she was still a grumpy little tyrant. 

"Daddy, don't drive too fast!" she ordered from her car seat throne. "Can't Mommy drive? I want Mommy to drive. Mommy never drives too fast."

"We're on the freeway, baby," Andrew told her. "I have to go fast."

"Can you not go so wobbly then? You're driving fast and wobbly and it's making my tummy hurt."

Paint night

Tonight was the school's mother/daughter night. I'm glad they moved it because it was originally on the schedule for earlier in November when we had so many unforeseen conflicts pop up on our calendar and probably wouldn't have been up for a paint night. I'm not sure we were feeling entirely up for it tonight either (and by "up for it" I mean "ready to socialize") but we went and we had a good time. 

They were running low on supplies so instituted a "one canvas per group" rule, which they then retracted but we didn't get the message about more canvases being available so we worked together to create our masterpiece.

Rachel painted the dark blue portion of the background, Miriam did the light blue(ish/greenish) part and I added some white in. And then we each painted one flower: mine is the middle, Rachel's is to the right of mine, and Miriam's is to the left.

Coming in threes

We survived Thursday, or just about have at any rate. Andrew's on his way home from Georgia and Grandpa's on the way to the airport to pick him up. Miriam got to organ class. I attended all three SEPs (student educational plans (or something like that)) for my school kids with my preschool kids in tow. I also met with a member of the bishopric.

I was so worried they were going to give me another calling (I have two) but when I got there they flooded me with questions about how we are doing and how they can support us more and that took up a good ten minutes or so. So I thought, "Phew! This was just a checking-in-with-y'all meeting!"

"I want to let you get back to your family," he said and I almost stood up to leave, but before I could he slipped in, "But before you go I wanted to extend another calling to you."

And I was like, "Oh..."

I tried to explain that my Wednesdays next semester are going to be rather busy since that's the night Andrew will have an evening class. But everything I said slid right off of that man like he'd been coated with Teflon.

So now I have three callings, I guess.