A Chinese Garden Festival

Sundays... a day of rest... in theory, at least. But not in practice, at least if you're a musician. I love Sundays, mostly because it is the one day that Dave usually doesn't have work and we get to see a bit more of him than we usually do. But if you judge the success of a Sunday by the proportion of rest actually obtained, then my Sundays would be a miserable failure indeed.

Let's take this Sunday. The choir was singing in church, which means that we meet at 8:15 to run through the piece at the church. I am not a morning person, true, but without children 8:15 is a reasonable time to meet for a pre-church practice. But when you add kids (especially a nursing baby) into the equation, an 8:15 rehearsal becomes a figure of impossibility equivalent to trying to match my weight with a supermodel's or my figure with Barbie's... it just ain't gonna happen. But the perpetual optimist in me really believes that if something needs to happen I will just step it up and make it happen. And I probably would have if I didn't have kids. I came really close. I was ready. Jared and Camryn were ready. Dave was ready to take another car with Jackson later. But then Adelyn wanted to nurse. Now. (No ifs, ands or buts.) And Jackson had a fever, so there was the question of what to do with him for church. I succumbed to the gravitational pull of my kids' interminable needs and ended up walking into my 8:15 rehearsal at 8:28, hanging my head in embarrassment and mortification.

Then I was on to substitute for playing the organ for church. So after a mad dash to find someone to sit with the kids I rushed to the organ and tried to use the few minutes of prelude to run through the hymns I needed to play for the meeting. (This is all the more irritating because I had some beautiful prelude prepared from the wedding I played for the night before. But my limited practice time for the wedding- most of which happened with Adelyn on my lap nursing- did not allow time to prepare the hymns for the meeting, so I was left winging it.) Luckily my kids were abnormally well-behaved. At the end of the meeting Adelyn was still asleep, so I took the liberty of skipping Sunday School to practice the hymns for next week (when I am on to substitute again).

Between an interview and other miscellaneous stuff I didn't get home until an hour before choir. Mad dash to feed kids, pick up house and figure out what is most essential to work on during choir.... Big stress out as I realize how little time is left until the Christmas program... By the time choir is done and cleaned up, most of the afternoon is gone. 

At this point Jared, handed me an important-looking packet of papers in his handwriting. He had issued me an invitation to "a Chinese Garden Festival" taking place at our house that very night! (I had lent out a bunch of greenery from our house as well as some white Christmas lights for the wedding the night before. Jared arranged the greenery, flower arrangements, etc. with white lights on them in our living room, thus creating the backdrop for his "Chinese Garden Festival." Why Chinese? I'm not sure... I guess it sounds more exciting than a just plain garden festival.) Complete with the invitation was a schedule of events (music, games, dinner, dancing, looking at lights, treat) and a list of music asking me if I would play and requiring my signature. (Even my own son can't invite me to an event without asking me to play for it. ;])

I was more than a little bit worn out by that point, but he was so excited about it that I didn't have much choice but to accept the invitation. So at 5:00 pm, Dave and I showed up to the Chinese Garden Festival. We walked around to look at the lights (it didn't take long), we sang songs for our music and then we all played Chinese Checkers before making dinner. After dinner we sang a few more songs, watched the kids dance and had a treat.

So I never was able to squeeze my nap in on Sunday. But I have to admit that despite the absence of nap time for mom, I had a good time. And I went to my very first "Chinese Garden Festival." Beat that, all you nap-takers. =]

How Can I Keep From Singing?

Last Sunday we started ward choir again after my break to recover from having a baby. We got off to a bit of a rough start. We didn't have a lot of people and it was just kind of a tough rehearsal- I didn't feel like we accomplished a whole lot or like people enjoyed it. Today it was Sunday and again, the time had rolled around for choir. While ward choir director is one of my favorite jobs in the world and I LOVE it when things are going well, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with choir. I LOVE choosing music, directing the music, having rehearsals, the friends I make at rehearsals, putting together performances, teaching people about singing, and so on. But trying to recruit and get people to come is the bane of my existence. I HATE recruiting for choir. Mormons are notoriously busy with multiple callings, small children, extended family, community activities and such. Trying to convince people that they can find time for one more thing, especially on Sundays, can seem like an impossible task. All along my hope with choir has been that if I try and work hard enough and long enough, eventually we will get a consistent group of people to come and we will be able to not just sing a song or two for church, but progress as a group and get better... that we will be able to make beautiful music that expresses our love for the Lord, brings the Spirit into the meeting and touches people's hearts. But whenever we start to take steps toward that, it seems like things fall apart and we go back to having a "choir" of 6 or 7 people. I try not to take it personally when people don't come, but it is hard not to....

For a while I have been getting discouraged with choir because it seems like we have had more steps backward than forward and choir has been getting smaller, not bigger. Today I decided that I needed to at least make an effort to recruit for the Christmas program and call to remind people. (Note: I would rather get teeth pulled than have to call and try to get people to come to choir. It makes me extremely uncomfortable and nervous. And I take it personally when they say no.) I started calling people and the very first person I called said, "You know I love choir but I just need to spend that time with my family right now." What are you supposed to say to that? The next two people that I called were also "no"s. At that point I was about ready to just ask to be released from this calling. Why do they have me do this if all I am doing is torturing people, tearing them away from their families and making them suffer through one more Sunday meeting?

Regardless of my inauspicious start, I kept calling people and got a few "yes" responses. I quit calling people when Dave called me to eat lunch. He had cooked bacon, toast and omelets for lunch. (Did I mention that I love this man?) After filling my stomach with delicious, salty, greasy food I felt much better about life.     

By the time we finished eating it was almost time for choir, so I started getting chairs out and getting the music ready. At a typical choir practice, two or three people arrive by 2:05, with another couple coming by 2:10 and a few more at 2:15. Today we had 6 people here by 2:00. By 2:05 there were 14 people. And more and more people kept coming. We had 25 people at choir today, including some brand new people who I didn't even call! We had a great rehearsal, working on a piece to sing later this month and a couple of songs for Christmas. The choir sounded great! We had fun! We made progress! I love this calling! Someone from the choir had volunteered to bring treats so people stayed for a few minutes afterward to socialize and eat treats. It was an all-around great rehearsal and great day.

I always worry that when we have a good turnout like this people will assume that this means that they aren't needed and will stop coming (this has happened to me several times). But if they keep coming, think how awesome it would be...