It's a Magical Time of the Year

Oh.

Our first School Christmas Recital was last night. Darren and I could hardly believe we were sitting there in the front row, anticipating our son's performance, digital camera in hand. Are we really doing this? Married, with these two beautiful kids? We have this amazing little family, and we work so darned hard at it, all day every day, but at the same time it's so hard to believe that we have this life.

There are a lot of things that happen to people all over the world that make their lives so much more challenging than ours. Sad things, and scary things. My little family is so precious to me, and sometimes the way I pay attention to everything that is happening to us is with an awareness of a fragility, that maybe I am just imagining, but that sometimes seems so real. Like we are this delicate tissue paper creation that could dissolve, or blow away, or simply be forgotten by the One in Charge.

Last night was magical. Most of the magic resides in my own experience of it though. With Frances on my lap, wiggling and trying to play with the camera, not as much magic leaked into the footage. The program lasted an hour with each grade giving a very special performance. Every grade wore a shirt with an identical design. Jackson's class wore yellow. If you look carefully at the shirts you can see a pretty special drawing on them that Jackson made! It is a string of Christmas lanterns with a little stick man under them.









The Kindergarteners sang two songs. I thought I was being clever by bringing the digital camera so that I could take stills and video, but next year I will only bring the video camera. The quality on the digital camera is fine for very small format but looks too grainy at full-screen. The audio is pretty good though! Jackson is front and center.





I also made a larger movie of some more of the performance. It's 50 mgs so you might be better off waiting for me to send you a CD but if you simply must have it now, here it is.