"And the Mountains in Reply"

"Merry Christmas!" We had a lovely and very musical Christmas Program at church today. I got teared up once on the opening hymn and then held it together for the rest of the program. The opening hymn was "Angels We Have Heard on High" - I loved the thought of angels singing and their voices being carried over the plains, "and the mountains in reply echoing their joyous strains." I thought of how our lovely mountains testify of Christ, of his might power as Creator. 

They reply with echoes of praise to his name. I'm grateful to be able to still go up into the mountains  this winter (the high temp today is 57!) and to be surrounded by nature in this beautiful state of Utah. It fills my heart with awe for God and gratitude for all He does for me. 

All of our family participated in one of the musical numbers, even me! Well, except for Hyrum and Natalie. Hyrum got out of it all cause he's a college kid and an agent unto himself, plus we never asked him to do anything. Natalie would have performed but her violin got kicked/bumped and flipped over by one of the deacons passing the sacrament, so we thought it probably got out of tune. Instead of tuning it real quick, which I thought she would do, Natalie just took advantage of the mishap by sitting out (slacker!) Owen Daniel Peter and Katharine started off reppin' the Wrides in two primary numbers - "Born to be a King" and "Still, Still, Still". 

THEN, the big number of the day, was Daniel singing a solo! He sang "Little Baby", one of the new hymns that will be in the hymn book that should be coming out in 2027. Video here of that number, with Abi accompanying on the last chorus. 

Then Daniel joined with the sopranos in the choir for the rest of the program. 

He loves to sing and he sings beautifully. The closing hymns was "The First Noel" and they said for all musicians to play for that, and so I brought my violin and I played too. :) I'm on the top row second from the left. 

There was a "linger longer" after church with donuts and apple cider. 

One thing I'm super grateful for today was the organist. Our family was asked to do the prelude, and we aren't really that great of musicians, so we were just going to do some simplified hymns. I was going to play "Come O Thou King of Kings" which I've learned on piano, simplified version, and then Sophi and Natalie were going to play a hymn without piano accompaniment, and then Abi on flute, then we were going to repeat that (we were asked to prepare 15 min of music). But we got there early to practice the Christmas hymns with everyone, so there were already a lot of families there, and other people were showing up early, and Christmas was in the air (and we did not prepare Christmas hymns) so it would have just been awkward for us to go up and play our little songs... I think it would have confused people, like why were we warming up still? Or what are they doing?? So I asked Brother Clark, who was already playing and would be playing the organ for church, if he could just keep going. He said yes, no problem, and I felt a great sense of relief. Thank you Brother Clark! He saved me from 15 minutes of stress and awkwardness.

So now we're back home from church with a big box of leftover donut halves. Corey has gone over to his dad's house and he took Katharine with him. I believe he is going to be doing Christmas wrapping. I am locking myself in my bedroom and hope to do a bit of Family History, aka blogging, for the next few hours.