Family Christmas Night of Music 2022

 

I think my favorite activity of the whole Christmas season was our first annual"Family Christmas Night of Music".  This is something I have wanted to do for a long time, and this was the year!  We (our family and our dear friends, the Chase Family) invited the ward, the neighborhood, friends, family, and piano students----COME! Let's sing Christmas songs together and perform for each other and just enjoy Christmas and Music.  Come and sing or perform or just listen.  And they came and lots of people wanted to share and it was everything I hoped it would be and then some!

For some of the sing-a-longs we had George on the drums and Elder Gabittas and bass guitar.  He was AMAZING!!!!! Raymond Chase and I took turns on the Piano.

Greta accompanied all three versus of "O Come, All Ye Faithful".  

Cannon sang "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" with George and I accompanying him.

Peter played "The First Noel".

My cute nieces led us in a song (I don't remember what it was).  They also sang "Winter Wonderland" for us.  

George played his rocking "Jingle Bells" along with Elder Gabbitas on the electric guitar.  This was really cool! And it was not just our family who performed.  We had a sign-up list of "acts" and it filled up very quickly and the whole evening lasted about 1 1/2 hours.  

My very favorite thing of the evening was our jazz band!!!!  Yes, we formed a jazz band and performed "The Christmas Song".  It was the most fun I have had in a long time!  Was it comprised of a middle-aged mom, a missionary, a college student, two high-school boys, and my own son?  Why, yes, it was.  But it was AWESOME!  

Here we are practicing in my living room a couple days before.  I just enjoyed it SO much.

As I write this a couple months after the fact, it is still such a happy memory.

Huge shout out to Elder Gabbitas (in red).  He is a musical GENIUS!  He could play anything on any string instrument (that didn't use a bow).  He improvised and just made us all sound so much better.  He'll be finished with his mission by next December.  I told him, we were going to have to have him fly back out to Utah to join us again next year!  And I'm so happy Bethany will be here for it next year.