Silver Bells

Oh yes, the holiday concert. Our first of many, many to come, and it came with a sweet surprise. I guess it shouldn't have been a surprise since Rosemary told me ahead of time, "I get to jingle the bells. I'm the only one. Mr. C [her music teacher] let me do it because I'm the best." (No ego issues there.) But, like a lot of kid stuff, it came out only in passing about 20 minutes before we brought her to school. Clearly we are on a need-to-know basis, or maybe even just a oh-by-the-way basis. Anyhow, I guess I forgot, or maybe was distracted by the morning's more pressing topic, which was that about 10 minutes before we left for school Rosemary said she needed to dress up as an owl because she was playing an owl in her class's presentation of old folk tale, The Mitten. An owl? What resembles an owl and is currently in our house? A flurry of possibilities were presented and rejected, and then she decided a basic black sweater with little paper feathers taped to the sleeves would be the right move. The paper feathers looked like cigarettes growing out of her arms. Good choice.

So anyhow, the kids all filed on stage and we were surprised when Rosemary, one of the last to get up there, walked over and carefully, carefully picked up the jingle bell stick and started (rather tentatively) ringing the bells. That's her in black in the front of the group:

You can't see her feathers but they were there. The whole thing made my morning. But this was Sylvia's favorite part of the morning (kind of a repeat of the previous post):