Joy to the World!

My family doesnt have a lot of must-do Easter Traditions (and you know how much I love traditions), but the best one is my dad putting on the old Keith Green record and blasting this gem throughout the house to wake us all up. Happy Easter everyone! He is risen indeed!

Thanksgiving

What an odd holiday this is, so overshadowed by the Christmas season. Barely standing on it's own feet - but at the same time so like Christmas in that the real meaning is very lost, and people just use it as an excuse to take off work to eat lots of food. And then people complain that the true meaning is lost. But who cares? Who cares about the pilgrims. Yes, it's good what they did, it's good to know the history of your country. The point has shifted from a history lesson, and the fall harvest, to just a time where people who love each other have an excuse to get together and show it. Yay! I didn't mean for that whole thing to sound grumpy, if it did.

I am following in my usual Thanksgiving tradition of sleeping until halfway through the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (shuffling in around the Snoopy balloon) drinking coffee, starting food prep.

"All right everyone, its 2:30, that means dinnertime, because for some reason on Thanksgiving dinner is at 2:30" -Lois Griffin

Five Things I'm Particularly Thankful for This Year:

1. Sarah and Josh for letting me come over and be family for their Thanksgiving.

2. My family, for letting me swoop in and spend most of my Maryland time playing music with my friends and liking me for whatever (however little) time I can spend at home.

3. Nicole and Jenny White. They are the greatest people, and I have known them forever, they have put up with me for over five years, through all my moving around and away and back.

4. The fact that this year, I am finally, finally finished with school, and finally getting paid to do what I've been doing for years anyway.

5. The discovery that no matter what state I'm in, I can find people to play string quartet music with. Thanks especially to Three Hits and a Miss (Red Wing, MN) and the Chroma String Quartet (Washington D.C.) (How'd you like that shameless plugging?)

There are more things I'm thankful for, but I've gotta get cooking. :) Hope everyone has a wonderful day, full of love and food and napping!

(apologies- I have both recital and french party posts pending, I'm just waiting on some pictures)

.the goose is getting fat

Christmas is coming,

the goose is getting fat

Please put a penny in the old man's hat

if you haven't got a penny,

a half-penny would do,

if you haven't got a half-penny,

God Bless You!

I know it's early, but this is the week that I have begun to get especially obnoxiously excited about the Christmas season. Small things like Paula Deen's tweet about the beginning of pie season, booking my flight home, seeing egg nog in the grocery stores, and finally a chill in the air (anytime now, Nashville?) just start the flutter of excitement in my stomach, and I feel five years old again. When I was five, I knew it was my parents and not Santa Claus, but that didn't make Christmas any less magical. Now, I'm not one to go ahead and set up a tree until after Thanksgiving (let's do this thing properly), but I do love when the year starts it's downhill slide into the holidays. As a violin teacher, I have been in the throes of planning a Christmas recital with the other teachers at the shop, so I've been teaching Christmas carols for a month already- but this is the week that it has started to hit me.

I think this December, I'll do what I did last December: a picture-a-day photoblog counting down the days until christmas. This year it will be more exciting though! Right before Christmas, I will be on the Celebrity Equinox visiting two of my dearest friends from my cruise contract last year - I haven't seen them since October 2010, and I am very excited about it! So instead of last year, posting the heavy snow and my lonely Christmas tree in Minnesota, I will be posting pictures of beaches, Cayman Islands, Belize, Mexico, Costa Rica.

But what I'm most excited about is my flight to Maryland on the 23rd, opening the presents from the aunts and uncles as soon as I get there, Christmas Eve going to all the services, playing the violin in the church I grew up in, waking up on Christmas morning (not too early, but still early enough) and doing the same things we've done every year: hiding the stockings, eating cinnamon buns and listening to whatever music anyone got as a present, lunching with Poppop, dining with the same families, ever growing.

The traditions are what I love, knowing that no matter how far I go, I can come back on Christmas, and even though we've lived in the same house for over 20 years, they still find new places to hide our stockings!

What's your favorite bit about the holiday?

I. Halloween

Happy Halloween! That magical time of year when people throw all caution and decency to the wind, and they dress up like what they wish they were all the time and then eat loads of candy and drink apple cider with rum. Tonight I'm celebrating by going to the Nashville Symphony, where we are told to "put on your Halloween costume, and get ready for serious chills and thrills when organist Tom Trenney provides live accompaniment for the 1925 silent movie classic Phantom of the Opera. An incredible musician and improviser, Trenney will unleash the full power of the Schermerhorn’s Martin Foundation Concert Organ — the perfect way to experience one of the scariest movies ever made!"

Also, I will be avoiding garlic and wooden stakes, because I will be a vampire.