My Tongue Tastes Like Glue

because I've been licking all my Christmas card envelopes. I don't mind, though. I love getting Christmas cards, so I figure I'd better give some if I want to get enough in return to cover our pantry door.

Also: can you believe it's only 10 days until Christmas? This late Thanksgiving thing has got my timing all off--it'll be Christmas before we know it!

I love Christmas. Even though it's busy.

I've had a few Christmas-related happenings over the last week, the biggest being the Relief Society Christmas dinner last Tuesday. It's always a pretty big undertaking--we save up so we can go out each year with a bit of a bang--but it wasn't as stressful as some of the Christmas parties have been in the past. And, yes, this is my 4th consecutive RS Christmas party, and yes, I'm starting to run out of ideas . . . but I'm also getting better at simplifying and streamlining. Kinda. The only un-simplified element to this year's party was the gift the RS Presidency and committee gave to all 150 sisters, a wooden plaque with President Hinckley's "Be"s (they've been the theme of the first Sunday RS Presidency messages for the past two years). We originally thought they'd be pretty easy, but after cutting, painting, measuring, decoupaging, sanding, and staining ourselves into a frenzy, the committee came to the conclusion that in fact these little buggers were NOT easy--no, not at all. The bulk of the work fell on our wonderful secretary, though, who headed up the project and to whom I am eternally grateful. And they turned out really nice. See?

So even though the night was freezing cold and the parking lot was covered with snow, we had a good turn out, the food was great, and I think everybody had a good time. Who could ask for anything more? (Although, truth be told, I won't cry if next year I just get to ATTEND the Relief Society Christmas Party. I'll just put that out into the universe. :-).

We also got to go enjoy Ethan's band concert. It was really good--surprisingly good for a Junior High band. His teacher is truly excellent. I can't imagine a more difficult job than teaching a couple hundred junior high kids how to play a dozen different instruments, then whipping together a decent concert in a few months' time. But Ms. Colligan does a wonderful job and it was really fun to listen to Ethan play.

A few photos, then. Before the concert (getting warmed up):

During the concert (blow that horn!):

After the concert (hanging with his trumpet-playing compadres):

Ethan's made some good friends in band and is becoming a pretty mean trumpet player. I'm glad he's doing it.

We also went out to dinner and to see Kurt Bestor's Christmas concert with some friends last weekend. Although my taste isn't super Kurt Bestor-ish, I have a soft spot for his Airus Christmas album, which I had on tape in the early 90s and listened to quite a bit during the holidays way back when. There are some really lovely songs on that album--they remind me SO MUCH of the Thirtysomething soundtrack that I also listened to a lot in the early nineties, although it was actually Forrest's soundtrack that he bequeathed to me while he was on his mission. (Why both of us, as high school students, were so enamored of a television show about angsty yuppies twenty years older than we were is a question left for another day.)

Anyway, the concert itself was quite good. Bestor himself is a little melodramatic and a teensy tiny bit self-aggrandizing, but there's no doubt he's a very talented composer and arranger. (Lyricist? Not so much. Forrest groaned a little during a song Bestor wrote about children giggling on sleigh rides and whiskers on kittens, or something like that, and I had to kick him under his seat and admonish him with my eyes for his cold, unfeeling heart. Even though I agreed with him. But I didn't groan.) But the songs WITHOUT lyrics were really cool and he had some excellent musicians up on stage. The best part of the night, though, was the special guest, Jonathan Butler, a South African-born Jazz/gospel singer and guitarist. His performance of O Holy Night was one of the best live musical performances I've ever seen in my life. Ever. Tears, chills, the whole nine yards. Totally made up for the giggling children and whiskers on kittens and then some. Amazing.

So I went to Youtube, hoping to find Bulter singing a Christmas song as my sign-off for this post, but I couldn't find anything Christmassy. I figured Gospel-y was good enough. Enjoy!