Winter 2017: Adventures Part II

Arlington Stake Nativity Festival

This past December I had the opportunity to perform 21 Christmas solos for the Arlington Nativity Festival (http://www.arlingtonnativityfestival.info/). I kept meaning to volunteer to sing for either the Arlington or Bellevue festivals, but I would always forget until they'd already been scheduled. This year I didn't remember until the beginning if November. Ithought I was probably too late again, but when I looked at their website their musical numbers all said TBA. I contacted them and found out she was just planning them that week. They were thrilled to hear that a musician with my background wanted to perform for their little festival. They basically said I could sing whatever sacred Christmas music I wanted for as much time as I wanted to.

Their stake music director, a retired concert pianist, offered to accompany me. She works at the temple until 4pm on Saturdays, so she suggested rehearsing with me each week on her way home to Arlington rather than asking me to drive 30 miles each way to her house.

My main performance was Saturday the 9th, but when I saw that not all the spots had been filled I offered to do another one on Friday at 4pm as a type of open dress rehearsal. Rush hour traffic was really bad going up there, so no one I knew came until around 6 when I was done singing. There weren't that many locals either since it was early on their least busy day. This actually worked out perfectly for me vocally. There was enough of an audience (people walking through the nativity displays in the cultural hall) for me to get the extra adrenaline and energy that typically comes with performing, but without many faces for me to look at, I didn't have any problems getting overly emotional (I often struggle when singing at church or funerals or anything else where people in the audience may be crying or feeling moved by the music. When I see them getting choked up, it's that's much harder for me to keep myself composed. I do much better singing in a big performance hall where it's easier to block out individual faces in the crowd so I don't make as much of a personal connection). My voice was absolutely on point! I wish I'd been recording. It was probably the best performance of my life. Too bad Oscar was staying home with the kids. I intend to keep performing for them each year, so next time I'll get a babysitter and have Oscar come up and record the first performance.

After it was over I drove home and we took the kids to the ward Christmas party. The theme was "A Night in Bethlehem." It was incredibly well done. There were little shops and crafts and a town well and middle eastern music playing.

Allison loved the Gladiator!

Silly girl taking a nap in the tent! Unfortunately it was late for little ones (7pm) and not really small child friendly, so I didn't get to appreciate it as much as I would have liked to. I also would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't had to chase Allison around all night. As it was we left before the crafts and games because it was 8:15pm and the kids really needed to get to bed.

The kids got to meet Father Christmas instead of Santa. Too bad Tyler was in the middle of a cough once we finally got both kids to look at the camera.









On Saturday morning I drove down to pick up mom on a beautifully clear morning with lovely views of Mt Ranier...until I got into Seattle and hit a massive blanket of fog. It stayed that way until I got nearly to the airport and received a text from mom saying they weren't able to land safely in Seattle and had been rerouted to Portland. I had to hang out down there for an extra 2 hours waiting for her. I went to a nearby diner and got a bacon waffle with bacon on top with 3 different flavored syrups (yummy!). They had a lovely smelling real Christmas tree right next to my table. I was still able to get mom with plenty of time to make it up to Arlington, but it definitely added to my stress level.

We took the kids up to the concert while mom rode up early with a friend of mine and her daughter to check out the festival before I sang. I started off with "Exultate, Jubilate," a song I had once prepared at the University of Washington but didn't end up singing. Meledie got a bit ahead of me, which was challenging since those runs are already super fast, but we found each other in the end. Malia and Hana were there and our good friends Nick and Liz that we met on our Hawaii cruise. There was also a girl I met at a stake activity a few weeks ago along with her family. There were many more people touring the festival than the previous days, and quite a few sat down and watched me. I was really thrilled to see how many kids were watching me and whispering to their parents things like "dang! She's good!" Anytime I can make kids like classical singing, its a success in my book! My program was about 75 minutes including my little breaks, so only my crew stuck around the whole time, but plenty of others sat down in the chapel to watch for around 10-30 minutes. You don't see most of them in these pics and videos since most people who sat down did so in the overflow chairs they'd set up in the cultural hall.

Oscar tried to video but could only do so much while chasing after the kids

Tyler is coughing or Allison is fussing in most of the few videos we got.

There was plenty of disruption free singing too, but that was while Oscar took the kids to the activities around the chapel.

Ria (who used to babysit for us regularly) and her family came too and helped out with the kids. They live pretty close to Arlington now. Allison was incredibly difficult in spite of their help. She kept trying to run up to me saying "sing song." She would not sit and struggled and squirmed whenever Ria tried to hold her. Ria and Oscar would take her out to the other rooms to do the children's activities and get cookies, but she kept coming back in trying to run up to mommy. Tyler, on the other had, was clearly getting very sick. He spent a good chunk of the concert lying down miserable. Later that evening he had a fever and threw up in his sleep (I'd had a feeling I wanted to check on him around 2AM and immediately smelled vomit when I walked in his room even though he was totally asleep. It was all over his blanket and sheets and some on the floor).

Here are some cute pics from Oscar taking the kids around the festival. I'd hoped to go tour the rest of the building with the family and get a nativity photo, but Tyler was just so sick that we really needed to get him home.

 Cookies and water for the hungry toddler

 Allison lying in a manger in the photo room.

I had to fight against emotion much more than I did the first night. I avoided looking at my mom entirely since I knew she'd be in tears pretty much the whole time (and was), but despite my best efforts, I lost it on my final song "Oh Holy Night." It wasn't full blown crying but it was enough that it negatively affected my singing and made the awesome finale I'd had the previous night pushed and sharp. Here I was singing about Christ while in a church devoted to Christ with hundreds of nativities on display in front of me, including a live one. There was just no hope for me to block out the emotional connection at that point. I did hold it together on a few other songs I'd been worried about, so I guess I was just at the end of my emotional blocking threshold.

That evening we tossed Allison's dress on Leela when we got home. She didn't mind.

This year we met up with Liz and Nick at Evergreen church lightshow in Bothell. It was beautiful as always, and it was fun to watch the kids react to it. Both of them love the winter train village and cookies and hot chocolate inside.

And, of course, miss Allison finds the wet playground and slides down the slide in the dark. She was soaked and had a super cold bum when I changed her at home that evening, which she hadn't even seemed to notice.

I returned with mom a few weeks later. It's improved since she last saw it 4 years ago.

I was able to use my camera a bit more that evening since I didn't need to worry about chasing after children.

And for mom's final evening we took the kids down to Wild Waves with lights.

Allison has been loving all things pony lately. She was very happy to ride one on the Carousel.

Tyler really liked having Allison to ride with on the kid rides, the ones you have to be under 54 inches to ride.

Both kids liked meeting Rudolph and Frosty and playing in the fake snow and cutouts.

Crafts and a show!

I didn't take many pictures of the lights since I took quite a few last year, but this display seemed new.

Everything was going well until the kids sat in a bunch of water on the boats. As soon as it was oer Ty said he was cold and wanted to go home (Allison didn't seem to mind). He'd also lost the blanket we'd brought for him, so he didn't have anything dry to sit down on in the stroller. Next time I'm bringing them a spare set of clothes!