Last night, we went to the school for the 1st grade holiday concert

and the 3rd grade holiday concert.

The 3rd graders sang “Children Go Where I Send Thee”. I’d never heard the song before, and I have to say that it completely ROCKED! We were so impressed, that we came home and spent a considerable amount of time trying to find a good version to download off iTunes. Nate bought the Natalie Merchant version, and I bought the Peter, Paul, and Mary version. While mine was better than Nate’s, :-), neither of them could touch the performance we’d just heard in the cafeteria. The music teacher had changed some words around, and added a “HALLELUJAH!”, after #7. It was magnificent, and I’m totally bugged that I’ll never hear it again for the rest of my long life.

Seriously, I’m thinking about sending out feelers to see if any parent in the school happens to have a portable recording studio that they’d be willing to haul to the school, and have the 3rd graders sing it again and record it, just for me.

A collage of pictures that don’t relate to each other follow. First, our now decorated tree…

Clark’s favorite activity that has me tripping and grumpy in the kitchen…

my anniversary roses that have opened and are even more lovely…

and finally, the horrific scene that I found behind my sewing machine on the dining table this morning, remeniscent of, but still not as cool as the gingerbread incident of 2005…

but with sheep! (I am sacrificing humor here, and attempting to phrase things delicately in light of the truly sad occurrences of violence in the news recently, in which there is nothing funny, whatsoever).

This week is insanely busy, and then next week, the kids are out of school for the year! I made the fool’s promise that the older two could paint their bedroom over Christmas break back when I was painting the basement months ago…

I’m going to have to bribe them to get out of it, because I’m not remotely up for it.