Christmas Cheer

A Little Concert

This past Sunday the girls and I played at church. We play every year around Christmas, but in the past we've mostly played by ourselves. This was the first time we played with the band, and now that we are in the new building it seemed even more impressive to play for such a large audience.

The video is pretty long (12+ minutes), so don't feel obligated to watch the whole thing! In fact, the girls only play on the first two songs.

Christmas Fun

It's such a fun time of year...

I was inspired to make a "tree" out of our violins this week.

We put our tree up on Dec 1, like always. 

We went to an unplugged worship night at our church and I snapped this photo.

a new ornament this year...made by an instagram friend in Australia

Our non-traditional advent "wreath"

We also have a spiral wreath that is more of a countdown, 

so we are using this one for our evening advent readings.

Our church looked pretty cool this morning...

trees made out of wooden pallets and lights hanging down that looked like stars. 

a few video clips...

I put these on instagram and I'm limited to 15 seconds there..

A Christmas Concert for You....

Christmas Memories ~ 2010 / 2011

2010

2011

Christmas Memories ~ 2008 / 2009

Walking down memory lane again....

2008

2009

Christmas Memories ~ 2006 / 2007

I was looking back on photos from past Decembers and just wanted to share some of my favorites over the years....

2006

2007

Slowing Down for Christmas

Friday we had a break from the rain and it was warmish (50s) so the girls and I made goodies for the neighbors and then spent the day delivering them and playing Christmas carols on our violins. Actually only Sydney and Kayleigh played. I remember past years how I would play to keep them together or drown them out...but now they can do it themselves and they sound great. 

I think (hope) our neighbors enjoy the mini-concert. It's a fun way to share our music with them. 

Saturday Sydney woke up pretty sick so our plans to work at the new church property as a family were ruined. Instead, we stayed home all day and caught up on housework and other miscellaneous things. 

This morning Kevin woke up sick and Sydney wasn't feeling 100% better so it was just Kayleigh and I who headed off to church with our violins. We played three pieces during the service - Away in a Manger, O Come All Ye Faithful and Silent Night. She did a great job and made this mama proud. (I'll work on making some videos tomorrow).

In a way I'm thankful for the excuse to stay home and slow down this weekend. It was restful and productive and I'm looking forward to the week. We have nothing to do, nowhere to go and I'm excited about that.

During some of my "free time" this weekend, I played around with my camera a bit. 

My camera takes three quick shots in the black and white setting, then combines them. Kayleigh was playing  while I took these and if you look closely you can see doubles in the bow, strings and violin.