It's The Most Musical Time of the Year - Part 2

Boy, this past week was ANOTHER one full of musical events to attend or to participate in!  

Sunday, December 11th was Emily's choir concert.  The venue was lovely, as you can see.  The church is just down the road from Emily's house so it was a good thirty minute drive to get there.   Elise attended with Steve and me and then headed back to Columbia.  Emily is just below the masked singer.

Wednesday at noon I met Emily at her place and we attended a Daughters of the Utah Pioneers meeting and luncheon where she was asked to sing "Ave Maria" with me accompanying.  Wednesday evening I drove BACK to Ballwin to attend Noah's orchestra concert at his high school.  And THAT time it was in the in pouring rain.  Ugh!  Not fun.  But, it was fun to see Noah sitting first chair in the cello section.  

Thursday morning Greg Farley came over with his trombone and he and Steve worked on their brass duet of "O Holy Night" for Christmas day church service.  I am accompanying them.

Friday night was Noah's Rising Generation Youth Choir concert in Kirkwood - not quite as far away as Ballwin.  It was quite good - a combination of singing and a little play that connected the pieces.  No photos, sadly.

Saturday night was a Saint Louis South Stake choir Christmas concert that I sang in.  I also played cello (the Piano Guys arrangement of  "O Come O Come Emmanuel") and directed the Hallelujah Chorus at the end as the conductor needed to play violin!  No photos from this concert, either.  

Saturday day, after Steve and I worked in the temple, we went over to Southerlands and I worked on the lovely Christmas song called "In The Stable" with the kids and Emily and Joe as we hope to sing it with the family in Indianapolis.

Yesterday (Sunday the 18th) I played "O Little Town of Bethlehem" in a string quartet in church and had our final choir practice afterwards in preparation for Christmas day service.  

WHEW!  That is a lot of music going on!

And, that was in addition to all the other things that went on last week.  I started last Sunday morning with diarrhea cramps and stayed close to a toilet most of the day.  By evening, I felt good enough to go to Emily's concert.  

Monday, we joined Emily and Beckie for lunch at a cute Mediterranean restaurant in the Central West End before our 2:00 tour of the Saint Louis Basilica.  It is quite the place.  There are more mosaic tiles inside than any other place in the world outside of Russia.  It is pretty breathtaking....

This ceiling is all mosaic!  

The tiny red objects hanging from the mosaic ceiling below are Cardinal ceremonial hats.  They hang until the cord holding them up breaks.  When that happens, it is believed that the Cardinal to whom it belonged to gets to exit Purgatory.  Strange Catholic belief, that is.  I thought only wicked people ended up in Purgatory and that one had to be pretty righteous to be a Cardinal....

Here we are in front of the Basilica.

Tuesday we were at the temple in the morning.  In the afternoon I worked on finishing up all our Christmas goodies and Beckie came over that evening and we watched a movie while she helped me make cream cheese mints.  The movie was an Italian sub-titled one called "Truffle Hunters" and was all about the white truffle harvest in northwest Italy.  Fascinating!  

Wednesday morning (early) we drove Sally and Linus down to Open Door Animal Sanctuary for their annual shots and for the vet to check them out.  Linus had been awaking in pain for a few mornings a few days earlier and we were worried.  She attributed it to old age and he has been doing much better so who knows why for about five days in a row he would wake up and just howl/cry with a sound we had never heard him make before.  Here is Steve below as we awaited the vet to arrive.  That cat on the table was very friendly and purry and was kind enough to leave our shirts furry.

This is Linus before he got groomed on Friday.  He was getting pretty hairy.  

Thursday was lessons most of the day AND another rehearsal at 8:00 that evening with the pianist for the O Come O Come I did on Saturday.

Friday was grocery shopping for us and for Fred, our blind neighbor, and for Charles, a homebound man who lives in our congregation.  Our little Kia barely had room for all the bags!  We also fed the sister missionaries before we headed out to Noah's choir concert.  

It has been just WALL TO WALL all week and we were desperately trying to get things done before Kirsti and Ryan and Alice and Ivan were to arrive this week. And, then I got a text Sunday morning that Kirsti tested positive for Covid and Ivan was probably also positive.  The much anticipated Christmas visit was cancelled - just like that.  Because, how miserable would it be to be sick and not in your own home and bed???  And the possibility of infecting the whole family???  Happily, they were able to get vouchers for their tickets so they WILL be coming to visit sometime in the next year.  Suddenly, all the running around trying to get things ready was no longer needed.  This week that I had cleared to spend time with grandkids just became wide open.  It took me all day yesterday to get my brain around all the ramifications of the Merrills not coming.  And, even today I will look at something that will remind me "Oh, yeah, I was going to share 'or do that with Alice and Ivan or Kirsti.".   We were going to be all together as a family for the first time since 2019.  Sniff!

Christmas movie watching has been pretty sparse, what with all the concerts.  But, we have watched "Elf" and "Polar Express" and "Mr. Kruger's Christmas".