Church Musical Performances

 December sure keeps me busy with lots of special musical numbers! This year was no exception. ere are pictures and lots of videos of some of the performances we participated in:

The Men's quartet I picked for this year was "With Wondering Awe". I picked it because it is an up-beat song, not too tricky, and not overly-played but still familiar. The guys did a great job, but I don't have a video unfortunately.

This year we had an official Ward Christmas Party, December 16 the same day as my recital. Last year, the party got cancelled due to rain. This year had a full program and full dinner. It was okay. It was a little too serious but we enjoyed listening to the musical numbers. For some reason I offered to perform a clarinet duet with Elisa, even though I hadn't play much clarinet in the past 20 years haha! I chose Gabe to be our accompanist. I knew Ian could do it just as well, but I really wanted Gabe to do it. It was a struggle to get him to practice it and play it half decent, but in the end he pulled it off pretty well, despite a little oopsie at the beginning and the end. Elisa was willing to practice, she squeaked a lot at the beginning of our practicing, but by the performance she was down to only one squeak. I ended up using my old clarinet because Elisa had a hard time playing it, and I let her use my nice real wood Yamaha one that I bought off some ASU college kid not to long ago. The lights were so bright in my eyes while I was performing that I didn't see any audience at all! I played piano for another musical number that we practiced at our house called "O Little One Sweet". Unfortunately, no one NO ONE took a video. Erik sang bass. The Piano Guys to a version of the song, but our version went a little quicker.

    

Here is my clarinet duet with Elisa. 

Erik singing in the ward choir

Here is the video of the primary singing. I don't think they knew the words very well.

Eating dinner. It was only just okay. Maybe I just wasn't very hungry.

Elisa invited her friend Jayde along

A Christmas family picture.

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Click here for the piano/organ "O Holy Night" duet that we performed Sunday Dec. 17. This was probably the roughest run-through, the performance was better thankfully. I have a recording of the performance but I can't figure out how to upload voice memos on to blogger--if its even possible. This was recorded not long into our run-throughs, just to get the balance right.

Dec. 17

Erik likes to sing in the ward choir. Here is a picture I snuck while they performed.

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Christmas Piano Recital 2023

 Here are some pictures and videos of the December piano recital. It was held at Riverton Piano Company. They let me hold recitals there for free since I'm part of their PEP program. Erik took lots of pictures and videos while I was busy orchestrating the recital. This was the longest recital that I've ever had before, it lasted about an hour--mostly because I let the kids play more than one piece, and one student's piece was 6 minutes long. I think the kids played well, as usual. I got videos of my kids playing:  

Elisa and Eliza's duet

Ian and Edmund's duet

Gabe and Carson's duet

Click here for Gabe's performance

Click here for Ian's first song

Click here for Ian's second song 

After the recital we went out for lunch with the Lewis family at Bubba's 33:

Random December Happenings

Here are some fun, random stuff we did in December:

Dec. 1

Click here to see Ian and I practicing The Piano Guy's I Saw Three Ships for the recital. I'm glad I got the video of this even though its not perfect, because Erik didn't get any of it at the recital. Thankfully we played better than this at the recital! To make up for that, however, we do get to see Ian dance!

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Dec. 1

I made Elisa a new Christmas dress. It has a circle skirt and cold-shoulder sleeves. I used some stretchy crushed velvet I found at Goodwill. She loved/loves it! It is comfortable and fits her perfectly---for now at least. She is getting so tall!

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Dec. 4

Elisa had her Christmas band concert. Somehow, no matter where we sit we can never see her, so I took some pictures while I good, even though they aren't the best. 

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Dec. 5

I found this awesome advent calendars way back in September or October at Walmart and snatched it up (glad I did--they were gone not much later) and Ian just loved it. He was so good and patient to wait to open just one each day. 

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Dec. 6

Gabe got braces, but not before crying like a baby first. 

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Dec. 6

The youth had fun caroling around the neighborhood and eating cinnamon rolls at the nearby park. Ian really wanted to go so they let him. 

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Elisa was in the front row, so we had a decent view of her.

Elisa is the only one with a green Santa hat.

Elisa's choir concert. 

Dec. 7 

It was crazy, there weren't enough seats so there were lots of people standing. I had to make up a seat on some weird coaching seat. On the way back home, Ian almost got ran over on the way to the car and the I almost ran over some people that were crossing the road. They really need to hold the concert at the high school so nobody dies next time.

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Dec. 8

Ian at the dentist. He did not like the fluoride at all!

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Dec. 14

Erik went to a work party at the Princess Resort and won a fancy cologne gift basket in the raffle. He got stuck in the parking lot with all of the Christmas festivities, but he sat down just in time to hear the announcement that he is that new chair of anesthesiology at his hospital.

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Dec. 16

Elisa decided that she wanted to participate in the Christmas piano recital. Yay! She chose Carol of the Bells and practiced real hard!

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Dec 17

Erik sang "One Small Babe" with the ward choir at church.

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Dec. 17

 Right after church, all of us went to see the Phoenix Symphony and Choir perform The Messiah at Pinnacle Presbyterian Church. The kids were pretty well behaved, especially since it was so long. It was really good though. The organ in the background was the one I played on when I first started taking organ lessons. It wasn't used in the program, but it is a really neat organ.

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Dec. 18

This is the oddest, and perhaps tackiest, Christmas gift we have ever received. Paper and plastic cutlery when you're expecting a treat is a bit disappointing. 

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