Crazy Weekend

I have survived the worst (best?) of the holiday craziness. I added up that I went to three parties this weekend, baked three batches of cookies, made one batch of fudge, directed one choir, attended one concert, and sang in one concert. Ahead of me, I just have a few get-togethers with friends and a busy Christmas Eve night, but for the most part, it can now be some peaceful preparation for Christmas. I have some stuff to mail, some shopping to do, and the decorating to finish.

I need to get to the post office today, and I want to take a nice, long walk, but otherwise, I'm not going to push myself. I slept very late and am still lounging around in my pajamas. It's utterly blissful after the weekend I had.

My preschool choir was interesting Sunday morning. As I feared, they made almost no sound. They made more noise while twitching during the prayer right before they sang than they did when they were supposed to be singing. At least they did the motions, so maybe they came across like a signing choir. The way I look at it, for the parents, having their children be that quiet was actually a nice treat. They're never that quiet. We had a microphone close call, though, that reminded me of my first Christmas at this church, long before I was a children's choir director. One of the boys in the preschool choir discovered that he was near one of the microphones and that his voice seemed louder, so he started singing louder to hear himself in the monitors. Then he decided to take advantage of the opportunity to make himself heard in other ways, so he started saying his favorite words into the microphone during the song. Being a four-year-old boy, that amounted to blurting "Poop!" into the microphone.

This Sunday, we had a near miss. We had the microphones on stands facing the steps where the kids were singing, but there's also a handheld wireless microphone on the communion rail that they use for the children's time or for other things that require someone not wearing a body mic to speak. One of my kids came down from the steps during the song and picked up this microphone and started trying to talk into it, then got frustrated because it wasn't on and didn't make his voice louder. However, he was near enough one of the microphones aimed at the choir that you could hear him saying, "Why isn't this working?" over the sound of the rest of the kids whispering the song. I have no idea what he would have said if the microphone had worked. This is the kid who's notorious for bursting out with "The Wheels on the Bus" at full voice during the communion prayer a couple of years ago. Who knows, maybe the mic should have been on and then he would have actually sung.

So, anyway, today is a day of recovery and rest, and the only things I have going on this week are ballet Thursday night and Star Wars on Friday.