Christmas at the nursing home

This afternoon we went to a local nursing home (The Addison of Sandy Springs) with some homeschool friends to give a lunchtime performance. The little(r) kids and I sang "Little Baby in a Manger," which I taught the kids in primary...but we really only focused on the first verse so I needed my phone to keep the other verses straight.

The kids sang this song for stake conference (like, all the youth and primary kids in the stake, thus the reason I scrambled a bit to teach our primary at least the first verse and chorus—because it hadn't been on my list of songs to teach originally). It was fun to get to sing it with them since I missed out on hearing them at stake conference.

Zoë's she really belts out the melody when she's at home but she turns into a little church mouse when she sings in public. We need to give her more opportunities to sing so she can feel more comfortable with her beautiful voice.

Alexander was excited to get to play "Jolly Old St. Nicholas":

And Zoë played "Go Tell It On the Mountain":

Miriam decided she didn't need to play a solo since she was the accompanist when the whole homeschool group sang, so she got to play a lot of songs. It was fun to see our audience singing along while we ran through our carols. It was lovely for the children to get to share their talents (several children aside from my own either played the piano or sang; one child didn't feel particularly musically motivated and so offered a sweet reading of the Christmas story). 

There was no one to take a picture or video of our group singing since Rachel joined in with us, but it was a certainly a cheerful way to ring in the season. 

Our friend Desiree noted that Phoebe was stuck to Rachel like velcro during the event. Phoebe is so happy to have Rachel home!