(AR & KH) Rehearsing for Mother's Day

Oh, I'm so relieved my weekend was over. I was so beat. I only had Friday night off from work and I had women's conference on Saturday. I had to leave after lunch to go home and sleep before work so I even missed Scott preaching. Poor Scott, he was in no condition to preach. He has some sort of abrasion on his left eye. And his left eye is his dominant eye and he already has double vision, so we are amplifying already poor vision problems. He didn't tell me this but Mel told me a funny story. At our church, we always pray at the end of the service. And then the Pastor will ask if anyone wants to invite the Lord into their life and hearts. Some people are kind of shy so usually everyone has their heads down and the Pastor will ask you to just look up and make eye contact with him so he knows you want to pray quietly along with him. Well, Scott's one good eye is now blinded so he asked people to look up...then he asked "if you want to pray with me, maybe you should wave your hand." Still he didn't see anyone, but perhaps it's because he was blind.

This morning, Cindy let me out of nursery which was an answer to an unsaid prayer. I was so tired I just sat in their office and worked on last minute stuff. I had my camera so I did take some pictures of Lori's girl and Erica's little boy. Erica and Dane insisted their child smiles constantly but I never saw anything. They persistently spent 10 minutes pestering that little boy with pokes and tickles and all I got were a few yawns. I think they're imagining things. I gave the following three pictures to the children's church because they are making gifts for Mother's Day. They said that they want to use the one where his face looks like he is constipated. I don't know which one they are talking about. You decide:

(1 Is that a smile? maybe it's gas)


(2 I think he was bored by his impromptu photo shoot)

(3. I think he's saying "what you talking about, willis?" )


Then I caught Kate actually smiling...but it was fleeting and then she jumped down and was pulling everything off the shelves. Hmmm, energetic child.

(You can only guess what mischief is waiting in that pretty little head)

Then after church we had a rehearsal for the children's church. Only 6 out of our 10 choir kids made it. It was a little chaotic. No, cross out the word "little." Oh, boy, I can only say that I am so thankful that I have really good friends who were there to share in the joy. We wanted them to practice singing on microphones with live musicians. Oh, boy, I have part of it on video and I think I want to youtube it. I can't believe I thought I would have to work with them to sing loud and not be afraid of the mic. I made the mistake of telling Kevin (thanks to our sound guy) to turn all the mics up...clearly we do not know little kids that well. They were so fascinated with the sound of themselves that we spent most of the rehearsal yelling "____, don't yell into the mic" and Kevin had to pull all their volumes down. The cutest part was that they really don't realize how loud they are singing and they all hunched over their mics. I tried to fix that by pulling their mic stands off the stage and 2 feet away from the edge. But as the song progressed, you saw their faces inching forward and forward until they were leaning so far forward I was sure they were going to topple off the stage. I still laugh thinking about it.

Troy led the actual practice part...which was great because he had all these ideas for the musicians. Stephen, Scott and Clinton were the musicians and must have played that song 10 times. Dural and Kevin sat in the sound booth and did their best to equalize the volumes. And Mel and I tried to oversee but really we were laughing too much, it was so much fun.

We've decided that this Mother's Day performance is either going to be really really cute or really really...loud. Come this weekend (Friday 7 pm, Saturday 5 pm, Sunday 8 am, Sunday 10 am) and I wouldn't sit too close to the speakers if I were you.