Who knows what the kids did for the 45 minutes we rehearsed. Amber was missing when we finished, but Jeff hunted her down and we never found any major messes or damage in the church building. I was pretty nervous about playing violin in front of people for the first time since college (aka first time in 12 years), and spent a good amount of time giving myself mental pep talks and doing some controlled box breathing. In between my minor freak-outs, I managed to listen to the three wonderful speakers and choir music and wrangle Amber.
My favorite quote from the speakers was one sentence: "every piece of sacrament bread is broken in a different way." I don't remember what else the speaker said in relation to that, but that sentence struck me as very profound. We are all different and we all have different trials and different "broken parts," but we can all take the sacrament to recommit to doing better and being more like Jesus Christ. It felt profound and wonderful as I batted away Amber's random middle finger and weathered her wiggly pummeling on our squeaky pew.
Jeff sang well in the men's choir, "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks."
The women's choir sang a number too "O Come All Ye Faithful." The choir alternated with the speakers: a talk, a song, a talk, a song, a talk, a song. The song I played in was after the third talk. It felt like a long time to sit anxiously waiting.
Grampa Dan, Grama Leslie, and Steph came to our ward to see Jeff and I in our musical capacity.(they went to their ward afterwards since it starts at noon). I was glad that our kids had someone to sit with when it was my turn to go up front and play, because while I was sitting with them I kept having to stop mischief--Amber and all her usual antics, plus Jay and a certain temptingly pointy un-bent paperclip. Jeff sat up front with the choir for most of the meeting, but I sat in our pew with the kids until after the final speaker. Then I went up with the five other string players (4 violins and 2 cellos) to accompany the choir in a beautiful arrangement of Silent Night. I fumbled the beginning, and my bow kept bouncing and crunching on the strings as my nervous hands shook, but we got through it. It was lovely in parts and passable in other sections. I recorded the audio on my phone's voice recorder app, pushing start and leaving it on our pew to record when I went up front. When I listened to it afterwards I could hear the mistakes, but in general it was still nice, and we all did our best with what we had that day. I was so relieved when it was over!
Right after our Silent Night, Lynette Rodriguez and Marilyn Linde played their beloved, traditional original piano-organ duet of Joy to the World that they've played at Christmas for the last 30+ years. Per Sunnyside Ward tradition, after the opening fanfare, the congregation stood and joined in to sing all four verses to close the meeting. It was powerful and moving and I could barely sing for part of it because I was wobbly with joy. But I pulled it together and enjoyed singing that stirring song with all my heart. Singing songs of praise in a large enthusiastic group is such a unifying experience. Sacrament meeting lasted 90 minutes, and the room was packed with people!
Just like every time I finish performing/being up front, at the end of the meeting I felt all wrung out emotionally. I just wanted to sit by myself in a quiet room and recover! But we had a ward cookie social right after sacrament meeting, so into the gym we went. I did my best to hand out our last few Christmas cards and socialize a little. It took great effort, and my stomach was still too knotted up to even think about eating any of the lovely cookies on display.
One of the teenagers in our ward and I were wearing the same floral dress which we both purchased from Amazon, so we took a picture together in the orange gym surrounded by merry cookie-eaters. It seemed so unlikely that out of all the thousands of possibilities on Amazon, we both chose the same dress. Everyone was happy and chatty with the cookies and the kids were all on sugar highs and running about. It was a big happy church ward family gathering. Eventually we went home where I finally relaxed enough to eat lunch two hours after our performance.
The kids convinced us to let them open a gift after church. We decided to open Grama Meri's gifts today, the cousin gifts tomorrow, and Uncle Sam's gifts on Christmas Eve. It was a hit.
To keep the Christmas cheer a-coming, we decorated our gingerbread house Sunday afternoon. This year we all pitched in and worked on one house together, and that is the way to go. I got us a kit from Costco and we were determined to use every last candy from the kit, plus every colorful piece of old Halloween candy that we could dig out of our black skeleton bucket. The gingerbread house started out neat and tame, but by the end there was a chocolate Santa lying murdered on the rooftop with a river of red icing blood trickling from his face down the shingles. It was pretty gruesome and silly all at once. We listened, sang, and danced to Christmas music, joked about the impossibly drippy frosting, and had a great time together. The kids ate way too much sugar and I did my best not to stress about it (although I made sure everyone did an extra-thorough teeth-brushing before bedtime). We were all a little loopy and silly--some of us with sugar, one of us with post-stress giddiness, all of us with Christmas cheer.
Riding home from church in our quiet little E.V. Jeff, hopefully: "does this count as our family picture?" Me: no.
Commemorative violin picture, trying not to relive all of the mistakes I made while playing up front.
Matching dresses!
For our traditional Christmas Sunday family picture, I balanced my cell phone on the narrow porch railing and set the timer. I took two practice shots while everyone assembled, and apparently used up Amber's one and only look-and-smile of the day.
Merry merry!
Opening the first gifts of Christmas: princess, Wonder Woman, and Star Wars bandaids.
My dreamy new toasty warm slippers. Never underestimate the comfort and joy of warm feet in a drafty house. My mom KNOWS about the importance of foot comfort.
Jay and Amber, blowing off steam--it was about 40 degrees and that felt so balmy warm to the kids after our long slog through mid-20s/low 30s that they went without jackets.\
GINGERBREAD HOUSING:
GINGERBREAD HOUSING:
She had two suckers and a jolly rancher in her mouth all at once. EEEK. We made her spit it all out once the gingerbread house was complete. She had ingested so many other sugary snippets before this trio. it was time to cut her off.
The finished product! We ended up squeezing the last of the frosting in the empty spots and sprinkling candy over it.
Sorry, Santa.
Jeff suctioned Amber's special light-up toothbrush to his forehead in hopes of minimizing her reluctance to have her teeth brushed. It didn't work, but it was still hilarious! Jeff the unicorn toothbrush man. "My horn can touch the sky!" he sang.
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