Snow Day!

The Children Present

Well the weekend is almost over and I am now able to sit and look back at the amazing weekend.  This past weekend we had our children's presentation at church.  I get the extreme pleasure of directing these amazing kids and working side by side with some of the most outstanding adults out there.  This year's presentation was "Meet Me At the Manger" and it was filled with the usual "interesting" moments.  Before I share some of the more funny and scary stories I will say that God was glorified, these kids were used and I know that God was pleased with our efforts.  I am always encouraged by these little hearts that give up their time, do things that are REALLY out of their comfort zone and do it with a smile.  Why?  Because they are doing it for Christ and His glory.  How can you walk away from that and not be encouraged in your own walk.  

The first scary thing we had to deal with was the weather.  I know that there was a lot of praying that went out, just hoping we were going to get to do it.  God was good and held off the big stuff.  This was the first year that I had all three of my kids involved in the presentation.  My two youngest were in the pee-wee's.  Sarah was actually fairly uneventful, got up on stage with a smile, sang the songs and off she went.  HUGE change from last year.  Adam, however presented some, um, embarrassing moments.  For the first presentation he became very concerned that his shirt was untucked.  So on the stage, front and center, he starts trying to tuck it in.  Well he is really digging down to achieve this task and as a result he spends the entire first run of "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus" with his hands down his pants.  And then there was the third presentation where I spent a few minutes chasing him around the stage.  Finally I picked him up and handed him off to grandpa.  When I asked him if he wanted to sing or go to grandpa he said "no, I wanna play with the mics"  Fantastic.  

Alex managed to keep most of his antics to the rehearsals for the big choir.  He was in trouble almost all the time but he turned it on for the presentations.  In fact he was even trying to "parent" the other kids so they would stay on task.  His hair was a bit of a distraction for him, but that's the price you pay for good rock star hair.  

Some of the other great moments were from other kids.  One girl hit her face with a mic right before her solo, that was great.  There was the pastors son playing air guitar during one of the songs, which the audience loved.  There was the kid that when I asked the choir what their secret weapon was, he said, without missing a beat "gas".  I was looking for cuteness.   There was the kid that thought he needed to show his neighbor how awesome his thumbs looked sticking out of his shirt right in the middle of the big serious moment for the choir, and he was in the front row.  Of course Mary couldn't find baby Jesus for the opening scene last night, caused mass confusion for the manger scene crew.  Then the biggie, the phone call at 6:00 this morning telling me that my lead girl had the serious stomach flu.  God was good and had her little sister right there willing to do it.  Amazing that she pulled it off.  An hour before the presentation she went through it for the first time on stage, the other actors helped her along and at one point she had to use the script on stage, but she did awesome and we were still able to present all the hard work.  Lastly there was the multiple times I almost pulled my skirt off last night.  The lace kept getting stuck in the heal of my boot and when I would go to stand the whole skirt would get pulled down.  Really frightening a few times.  Seriously the stories could go on and on, but over all I have to say it was amazingly fun, really encouraging and as always a chance to see God's hand at work.  He is faithful and good and never leaves us to do it alone.

photo shoot

OK, so I am going to attempt to post some pictures from my most recent photo shoot with my good friend Valerie Hibler.  If you do not go to this girl for pictures you are nuts, she is amazing!  Check out her website  www.valeriehiblerphotography.webs.com and see her work.  What I am posting is mostly proofs from a cd she sent me, so they are not as beautiful as they will be when finished.  She has this amazing ability to make our pictures so flawless and timeless.  She can even move heads, that's right, move heads.  Moms know how fantastic that is because we have such a hard time getting everyone to look at the camera.  Or we finally get the kids to look wonderful and we have a horrible double chin!  She can even take a few pounds off if you want her too :)  There are no family pictures here because they needed to much tlc from her still, when I get a nice finished product I will post it.  Most of you will be getting our Christmas card this year and I can't wait for you to see the awesome picture she took for that.  I am really pleased with how it turned out.  Enjoy a few pictures of my kiddos and call this girl, you will be so glad that you did.