40 Shrimp and 40 Winks 'til Christmas

We enjoyed a coupla Christmas events last night, although we didn't enjoy that they were scheduled to happen on the same evening. Last night was the annual Christmas party for faculty and staff hosted by the university president and his wife (remember last year's event?). So many people accepted the president's invitation to attend that the Elks Lodge (where the party was held) had to remove a divider that usually sets off our party room from the main dining room for their restaurant, and we took over the whole facility! There were four food stations in various parts of the room, and the highlight for me was the one that featured piles of gigantic shrimp with cocktail sauce. Delicious!

We pretty much had to wolf down our food, though, because we had to get to the next event on time: Hillary's music program at school. We ended up sitting at the party with two other faculty members with children in the program, so we all left early. (And I found out today that, after we had left, my name was drawn to win a door prize: one of the poinsettia plants that decorated the tables. Just my luck.) Susan's dad had eaten supper with the girls at our house (while we were at the party) and then delivered them to the school, Hillary to get ready to perform and the other two to help him save seats for when we arrived.

The music program was called . . .

(Notice any spelling errors? By the way, the title was spelled correctly in the program, so I can't explain this very public mistake.)

. . . and featured Hillary in the role of . . .

(That's Mrs. Claus, by the way, not ol' St. Nick himself . . . although Hillary's Mrs. Claus had a large belly just like her husband's!)

She was very expressive in the delivery of her lines--so much so that people who had seen the show earlier yesterday afternoon (the students performed it at 2:00 and 7:00 P.M.) approached Susan and me before we went to the evening performance to tell us how impressed they had been and what an impression she had made on them. We were pretty proud, and it was a joy to see how "into" performing Hillary was.

Abigail commandeered the camera and put herself in charge of taking photos last night, resulting in a collection of images such as this . . .

. . . and this . . .


So just take my word for it: It was cute, and Hillary did a fine job, and we all enjoyed it.

Here's Hillary after the show posing on stage. Inside that fake fireplace is an actual television on which ran a real video of an authentic fireplace fire, making for a faux fire in the imitation fireplace throughout the performance. Very post-modern, don't you think?