Christmas music and plays

I put together a night of Christmas music. Here's a picture from it. Mark and I both played a few piano pieces and I asked my friend Kathryn and Jared to play a couple numbers. Kathryn was a piano major at the U and Jared is a violinist. I did an arrangement of Silent Night with me on the piano and Jared playing the violin. It was nice to do it with Jared because he likes to play by ear. So I didn't have to spend hours writing it all out, I just told him what I wanted him to play. :) It was awesome. I'm so glad the night actually all came together. It really helped me progress to have something to work toward. It might become a tradition for us since music is one of my favorite ways to celebrate and bring the Spirit of Christmas.

Mark and his brother Mike were in a Christmas play called "Christmas Without Mr. C" They were the mysterious travelers. They were hilarious. In the play Santa decides he's going to take Christmas off because he's tired of kids being so ungrateful and greedy. So, he's going to go to the Bahamas instead. But one little boy realizes he forgot to mail his thank-you note to Santa the year before so he goes all the way to the North Pole to get it to Santa in time. He meets the travelers at multiple spots along the way. So, Mark and Mike came out as different people with a different accent each time. They made their characters very funny with lots of little jokes. There were about 40 kids in the play, which included all of Mike and Tami's kids. It was very cute. Tami directed the music for it. I got a little clip of Mike and Mark's awesome Russian dance.