Messiah

Since both my sister Jess and I flew home for Christmas on Christmas Eve, we went to the Messiah Singalong at the Kennedy Center. It's free but we had to wait in the cold until they opened up for tickets. Luckily we had something to do:

And then when we finally got our tickets, ate dinner and got into the concert hall, we loved everything about it, except one little minor very important detail, we didn't have music.

NOTHING on the Kennedy Center website informed us that we needed to bring our own music. I was so angry I wanted to cry.

Luckily we both knew some of it already, but having the music would have been nice. The highlight though was singing the Hallelujah chorus with 2,000 Washingtonians. Everyone singing about God and Jesus a couple days before Christmas was really cool.

I was snapped a couple pictures before the picture Nazi (a.k.a. the really anal usher) yelled at me for having my phone out. And for that, I'm definitely posting the pictures I took, especially the one of the concert hall.

I'm a little late, but I'm still wishing it was Christmas and not the second week of January.

Merry Christmas!

It only took us until 4:00 to finally finish opening presents but we were able to have a lovely church meeting and talk to my sister Emma on her mission in London too. It's been a good Christmas.

And I'm posting this video again because I liked it so much last year.



Merry Christmas! Hope you all have had a most wonderful day!

Sigh of Relief

Our front window from the outside.

Yesterday I took a sick* day. I was not actually ill. I was more sick of work and needed a lovely day of R&R. It was awesome. I feel so rejuvenated to be at work today. Highlights of yesterday include: getting my computer fixed at the Apple store; putting together** the shelf I bought at Target while watching a really stupid and awesome movie, Christmas Cupid; having my new and lovely roommate Lindi surprise us all by bringing home Cafe Rio for all; and eating the cheesecake*** I made the night before for Lisa's dad's birthday.

Last weekend my sister Jess and I went and sang carols at The National Gallery of Art. It was so much fun because the acoustics were awesome and everyone was singing. There's something about singing the same loved songs with 200 other people that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy. Then we went to the Christmas market by the National Portrait Gallery. I love living near a big city. (In the city would probably be even better.)

*when I told my sister Cami I was sick I imitated Karen on Mean Girls. Cami quickly followed up with Regina's response, "Boo you whore." So as I was looking for the clip linked I came across an 8 minute version of Mean Girls dubbed over in Polish and it made me laugh. For the Polish speakers out there, check it out.

**actually I did a terrible job putting together the shelf and couldn't find pliers to pull the little wooden pegs out of the holes when I messed up putting it together (due to lack of direction following) and the closest thing I could find to the strength of pliers was my teeth. Yep, I pulled those pegs out with my molars.

***it was a cheesecake making first. also, I used orange instead of lemon, and decided to go overboard by busting out my juicer to get the orange juice.

St. Nikolaus

In Germany the Christ child brings your Christmas presents on the 25th. St. Nikolaus, or Santa comes on December 6th and fills your boots with coal if you're bad or oranges, and gold chocolate coins if you're good. I planned on doing that for my roommates. I forgot. And now its December 7th and I forgot. And it's sort of kind of tragic to me.

On a happy note, Handel's Messiah was a success. The choir was beautiful and consisted of boys and girls under 18 singing the treble line. It added a different dimension to the singing than a regular soprano would. I loved it.

This might be my favorite song from the whole thing:

(not the performance I saw but still good)

Christmas time

I don't ever really feel like I'm in the Christmas mood until I get to Oregon. I'm ok not decorating a tree. (In fact, I actually don't like decorating a tree. Weird right?) And I would much rather just come home and have everything decorated and beautiful. So, today when I cleaned out my google reader friends had posted two good Christmas videos. And I'm going to share them right here.

First, Coldplay's Christmas Lights video. Oh how I adore Coldplay. Everything about this video makes me happy and makes me feel like all is good in the world. Maybe its Coldplay. Maybe its the fireworks over London at the end. Maybe its Christmas. But all I know is, its good.

(Thanks Rach for posting the video.)

And second, how cute are kids trying to explain Christmas? They're just adorable. I like the little girls with their hair done pretty, the big teeth that will need braces, the little boys with the scratchy voices, the speech impediments, and their cute honesty and innocence. (And especially the teeny little girl at 2:22 talking about Baby Jesus!)

(Thanks Megs for posting the video.)

So, Merry Christmas. I'm sure I'll have more Christmas posts to coming. For the season, my to-do list looks a little like this:

• Scottish Christmas Parade
• Handel's Messiah at the National Cathedral
• National Zoo lights
• Christmas concert at church
• Walking through the White House Christmas ornaments display
• Maybe getting a White House East Wing visit
• Making cookies
• Getting presents for my family
• Hitting up the work Christmas parties