The Gift of Harmony

After getting Emerson out of the car at school this morning, I quickly clipped her little hair bow into place. I then said, “Ohh you’re so pretty!” And this first photo below is her replying, “YEAHHH!” At least she has no confidence problems! 🙂

My makeup was on point today, and I love the lip gloss color I picked out at Walmart over the weekend. I guess you could say I was “feeling myself” (which I think is the appropriate way to use that phrase the kids say these days), so here’s a rare, solo-selfie, to commemorate my good make-up day, and the fact that I interviewed for a promotion this afternoon! (Didn’t want to make a big deal out of the interview deal, in case I don’t get it, which is a real possibility, but there’s my news…)

Lunch was leftover chicken & rice… I told y’all it made a huge pot, and has provided lots of meals. Jeff also has one more container to take for his lunch tomorrow, and then that’ll be the last of it. While I ate, I listened to more of the Elton John book, but I think I might actually make it to the end. I have a little over 4 hours left, and it will disappear from my Libby account Friday at 8:45am… I think I can, I think I can…

Today at school, Emerson’s class had a special little Thanksgiving lunch celebration. Parents were invited to attend, but I knew she would be heartbroken if I came in the middle of the day, but left her there to return to work, so I just decided to skip it. Luckily though, the director Ms. Renee took this great photo to send to us, and I love it so much! And of course, out of that whole plate full of food, she’s eating the mac & cheese! Typical.

Afternoon break was a bag of “naturals” popcorn (which I was afraid would be gross and plain, but was actually delicious), and a quick listen to more of my audio book.

Grammy picked up Emerson from school for the first time in a few weeks, and she was so excited about it! The family met up for dinner before church at Tijuana Flats. Let me back up though… we chose that place specifically today, because Emerson wanted a quesadilla. Early yesterday morning on the way to school, we were group-texting about our girls’ lunch, Mom asked what we each wanted, so I voice-texted my lunch order to the group. When Emerson heard me, she was like, “Quesadilla? Emmie have quesadilla?” So I said, “Oh I’m sorry, not right now, or not today, but maybe soon? Would that be OK?” She said sure, so when I shared that story with the family, we decided we needed to go somewhere for dinner tonight where the little girl could get herself a quesadilla!

Her kids meal came with a little tattoo, so Emerson got her very first tattoo tonight, at the tender age of two! 🤣 Obviously, it was just one of those wet & stick ones, but she was proud of herself for it. I messed it up and only got the fingers of the hand, so I had to do it a second time for the palm, and it was a little bit off, but she didn’t seem to mind. Look at her little tongue in the second photo below!

She likes helping buckle herself in these days… And of course she had to ride in Grammy’s Jeep!

My voice is still a little scratchy, and all during choir I felt like I had a tickle in my throat that I just could not get rid of. But I still sang as well as I could, and just mouthed a few parts that were a bit out of my normal range.

We also started trying to rehearse some our songs without our music, using the lyrics on the screen only – and it actually went pretty well, for the most part. It also helps highlight a few trouble spots we know we need to work on more specifically. (Insiders tip – we always have the words on the screen we can look at in the back of the sanctuary, but we have to memorize the music parts.) Also, performance times have now been posted on Facebook (which I shared earlier today), and you can get FREE tickets here on our church website.

When our choir director was praying at the end of rehearsal, he said, “thank you Lord for the gift of harmony, and music, and instruments,” and I just loved that. As an Alto (that’s the lower women’s part, for you non-music people), I almost always sing the harmony part, and it’s honestly my favorite. And the phrase, “the gift of harmony” just has such a nice ring to it, and can mean multiple things.

After worship choir, and Christmas tree choir, we had an impromptu ensemble rehearsal, so we could do sound check with microphones and the tech team. And I gotta say, we sound pretty good. (I have the opening solo in one of the two ensemble songs, and I’m really excited about it! I’ll be nervous come performance time, but right now I’m just excited!)

And this cutie had a good time in the nursery tonight. She actually had a little accident and bit her tongue, but they loved on her and gave her a purple ice pop, and of course she loved that, and then she was perfectly fine!

She was mostly easy to get to sleep tonight, although I did have to get a little stern with her at one point, explaining that since it was so late, we were only reading one book and watching one night-night video, and Mommy just wasn’t going to put up with her stall tactics. After some whining and pitiful partial sobs, she was fine and agreed and laid down on my shoulder for lullabies. My voice was spent at that point though, so we just listened to the nice professional ladies sing on my phone 😁

It’s almost 10pm by this point (which is later than I usually write/post), so it looks like I’ll just have a cup of hot tea, watch one episode of FRIENDS, and go to bed soon.