Hillary's Starring Role

A couple months ago, the fourth- and fifth-graders at our daughters' school put on a music program in which Suzanna sang a solo (remember?). Tonight the kindergarteners and first-graders performed in Winter Holiday, a Christmas-without-mentioning-Christ program that featured Hillary in a main speaking role. The premise of the program: It's winter, and a TV news broadcast announces that snow is a-comin'. Don't go to work; stay home from school; instead, enjoy the snow. The winter- and snow-themed songs that follow the weather report are tied together by occasional returns to the news program for weather updates, but then it's back to singing and dancing with props and minimal costumes and cuteness all around.

Hillary played Wanda Weather, the broadcast meteorologist charged with warning viewers about the oncoming snow storm. We practiced her lines at home and helped her with the comic timing in her delivery (she had to say puns like "and that's SNOW fooling" and "SNOW doubt about it" but wasn't pausing for the audience to absorb the jokes--amateur!). Not only did she do an awesome job of delivering her lines, but she also spoke so clearly and loudly that she maybe didn't even need the microphone (although her compatriots on stage truly needed theirs). She was praised to me by university colleagues, too, who attended for their own nieces and nephews, figured out who Hillary was from the program, and wanted me to know what a stellar performance they thought she gave. It was fun to watch her committed performance both in the news program scenes and in the large-group choral numbers. And kudos again to the girls' music teacher for getting fine musical performances from such large groups of children, none of whom sat with closed mouths or grumpy faces, and none of whom squawked out of tune.

Tuesday nights the girls have piano and ballet lessons, so I attended the afternoon performace of Winter Holiday so I'd be available tonight to shuttle Suzanna and Abigail to and fro ballet while Susan attended Hillary's music program (after getting Abigail to and fro piano and Hillary to and fro her own ballet class). All the other grades attended the afternoon performance, so I got to see Suzanna and Abigail as their classes filed into the gymnasium. Happily it worked out that everybody could see Hillary's show (although not all together) and still do the regular Tuesday night activities.

Now we await Abigail's school music program, coming up in the spring . . .

In work-related news: My Secret Santa is a thief! For our office's Secret Santa gift exchange, I have left little surprises in my assigned coworker's office for him to find yesterday and today, and I have an exciting array of inexpensive, silly gifts for him each day until "the reveal." My Secret Santa? Stole my clock. Right off the wall. Nothing from him/her yesterday, and then today my clock was missing. On my desk was a note--using a computer font made to resemble the clipped-from-magazines writing of kidnapping ransom notes--with this ultimatum: show "an excessive amount of holiday cheer this season" or never see my clock again. Why, oh why, did I get an evil Secret Santa?!