thankful to be done... until next year

Today was the annual Primary Sacrament meeting program. (my 4th as chorister) As usual, the practices (we only had 2 this year) were chaotic and crazy, yet it pulled together in the end and it was a great program. A few little glitches along the way... like the announcements and sacrament taking longer than usual, and me sitting there starting to panic ... planning where to start cutting out music... I told the pianist we were to going take every song up a few notches in the tempo department, and to look at me before each song, so I could signal to him how many verses we would be doing. (playing it by ear as I gauged the clock) It went well. In case you are wondering, (and I know you must be) here are the "stats" from the program. 73 children were there and did their parts. (79 possible, so it was a pretty good turnout) I would guess that 80% of them had their parts memorized. We sang 10 songs in the program, plus senior primary did 3 more songs as prelude music. In total, they sang 27 verses of music. They did an AWESOME job! I felt bad that I had to cut off verses of several of the songs right there at the last minute, (I took out 5) but I guess that's just the way the chips fell this year.

You should have heard them sing "How Firm a Foundation." We did verses 1,2,3, & 7 and man oh man - they sang with POWER! It was so great! It was so great to hear them building up the "I'll never no never, I'll NEVER no NEVER, I'll NEVER NO NEVER NO NEVER FORSAKE!!!"

For the closing hymn, the children sang Families Can Be Together Forever, with the congregation joining in on each chorus. It was really amazing. (lots of blubbering mom's - plus a few teary eyed dads - out there in the congregation during that song)

Another fun thing we did this year was that the bishop asked us to have two 11 year old children, one boy and one girl, lead the music for sacrament meeting. Keiffer D. led the opening hymn, and Allie S. led the sacrament hymn. They certainly weren't perfect and polished conductors, but I was pleased with how they did, and I was actually surprised at the impact having them lead seemed to have on people. I had lots of people comment to me about how special it was to see them up there leading the hymns. They were both pretty nervous. I was proud of them!

All in all it was a good day. I am super tired - it was long a rather difficult weekend, and I am ready to go to bed!

As a little side note, as part of the prelude music, I had Aaron sing with 3 other kids the new song for next year's program. It is titled "I Know That My Savior Loves Me." and I just love it. Aaron loves to sing and I think he is really quite good, but he gets super shy and nervous, so I asked a couple other kids to sing with him rather than putting him on the spot alone. It's too bad he gets so shy, because he stayed as far away from the mic as he could, yet he really has a beautiful, clear voice, and I would have like to be able to hear him better. Oh well. I was proud of him for having a desire to do it and for learning it so well.

Speaking of side notes and singing - Caleb is standing here next to me while I type, and he's singing away. Apparently they must have sung "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam" in nursery today. It's ADORABLE! - I keep trying to be done, but I have to share - Caleb just switched songs. Now he's singing "I love to see the temple," but instead of the words, he's singing "ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma..." continue on, all the way to the end - singing ma (aka mom) to the tune. I just love this boy! Although right now I'd probably love him just a tad more if he were ASLEEP!

OK - enough of this - I've got to get to sleep. 5am comes awfully early in the morning!