Away in a Manger

Happy Christmas to all my readers! I can say, from years of experience, that probably the most obnoxious way to get woken up in the morning is by someone jumping on you. I know this because every Christmas morning my younger siblings come wake me up sometime between 6 and 6:30 a.m. by jumping on me. This morning I was already slightly awake so I heard someone running through the kitchen and dining room. I tried to roll into a ball to protect myself but before I could, Ty was already in my room pouncing on me. I was surprised that Bryn wasn't with him because usually one of them wakes the other up (of course by jumping on him/her) and then they jointly come to wake me up. Bryn showed up two minutes later so I got jumped on twice. Usually I greet this treatment with some gruff-sounding mumblings, pull the covers back up to my chin (they always pull them off), and stuff my head under my pillow. But since I was already kind of awake by the time they showed up, my grumbling session was shortened and I was soon up and racing into the living room with them to check out our stockings. We waited for my parents to come join us and then we all opened our stockings. I was surprised by the number of books that can be fit in or nearly in a stocking. I'm really not sure how I'll be able to read them all before break is over. I haven't even finished "Harriet" yet, but I'll try to work on that this coming week and then get through a couple of my new books. I read two of the small kids picture books already this morning between stocking and Christmas present-opening time. One of our traditions on Christmas morning is to open our stockings really early and then to make hot chocolate and/or freshly-made coffee cake and drink/eat it either during or right after opening our Christmas presents. We also hand out all the presents from under the tree to each person and then we just go around the circle each opening one present at a time. None of this ripping all the presents open at the same time for us. We use a orderly method to prolong the package-opening ceremonies. I got quite a few awesome gifts. Actually they're all awesome. But I have to say, my most surprising (and therefore most memorable) present was a voice recorder. Now I just have to figure out how to use all the features, but I'm sure my dear brother will help out with that. We tried it out on my grandparents this afternoon and we were both pretty impressed with the sound quality. The recorder will help out my interviewing so much, especially to get exact quotes! I'm excited to try it out when I get back to school.

After the presents were all opened and hugs were exchanged were brought our stuff to our rooms. Then we talked to my older three siblings. Ty skyped my older brother Mark and his family and that was hilarious. The kids were so excited to see us all on the screen and they showed us all their new toys and other assorted items Santa had given them. We also got to see their new-to-them dog, who is really cute. I can't wait to meet her in person . . . or in canine-son. Then Coral and Tucker sang "O Tannenbaum" for us. Well, Tucker sang the words in pretty good German and Coral spent the entire song dancing, jumping and twirling all over the room. I'd say she must be a Q. cause her jumps looked a lot like the ones I experience every Christmas morning. When that call was over we all took showers and got to work on the Christmas dinner preparations. Then my grandparents came over. Bryn, Ty, my grandpa and I set up the crokinole board and, after us kids practice our shooting a little bit to regain a little bit of skill, we played a game. Sadly, Ty and I lost to Bryn and my grandpa with the final score being 105-50. I'd say we were sorely beaten although it was a pretty close game at the start. Then we ate Christmas dinner, which was amazingly filling, like Christmas dinner's should be. We were all so stuffed full, in fact, that we vetoed dessert for the time being and listened to my mum read a couple Christmas stories instead. Then we had sundown worship and played a Bible trivia game, guys against girls. The girls won 25-22 so at least I won one game today. When worship was over my dad and Tyler took my grandparents home and then Bryn, my parents and I went to the hospital to visit my great-aunt, my grandma's sister, who has been in the hospital for a week and a couple days because of asthma-related problems. She was really glad to see us, especially since all her roommates were either moved to other rooms or gone for the holiday. We talked to her and read her some e-mails from church friends and family members who live far away. Then the nurse came to assess her and visiting hours were over so we left.

Now my siblings and I just finished figuring out what we're going to play for our church Christmas program tomorrow. We thought we'd play one of the songs we did with orchestra for the School of Music Christmas concert, but that sounded pretty bad with just us three, so we tried a few other ideas, none of which worked out too well. Then Ty said we should just do something easy, like "Away in a Manger" Bryn started playing it and Ty joined in with the rhythm from the version of "All Creatures of Our God and King" we made up. I came in with a harmony part and that's how we decided what we'll play. It's weird how we just play around with things and get kind of discouraged and frustrated that things aren't working out and then all of a sudden something comes to one of us and we all contribute ideas to make it awesome and a new version of a song is created. What a weird process. But it seems to work. Bryn and I tried out some different ways to change up the verses and I had the idea to do a round kind of thing for the first verse. It sounded really cool at the start, but had some clashing notes in certain parts so then I tried coming in a bit later. It worked sounded weird. So then I tried waiting a bit longer to come in and it worked all really good until the last two lines and then that part sounded just awful together. We were almost ready to toss that idea aside when I realized I could just switch to playing a harmony part at the place where it started to sound bad and we could finish play in unison instead of a round. We tried it and it sounded good. So we kept that idea. Then just a little more tweaking made it sound reasonable. I hope it's not too short though. "Away in a Manger" is a pretty short song so we thought up four verses and an ending, but it still seems not that long. Anyway, the audience will just have to be happy with what we play. Hopefully it goes well tomorrow.