I could have entitled this blog a musical week, but the main musical highlights happened over the weekend. Our children’s ministry started practicing in September for our annual Christmas musical. This year the musical was Jingle Bell Beach which featured three singing groups competing for top spot in a singing competition. Owen and Graham were both a part of the “Electrons” – the pop/techno group. Performances were this weekend and they went so well! Owen did a great job with his two solos. Both boys were fabulous at memorizing the words and motions. It was so fun to watch the whole production come together.
Jeremy spent quite a bit of time preparing for the musical this last week. From picking up additional microphones and choir risers to shopping for t-shirts and snacks, he was a busy guy! On Wednesday, Owen attended an extra drama/solo practice and I joined Jeremy and Graham to help with our Wednesday evening children’s program. It was an all-hands-on-deck kind of a week. On Sunday morning, I was backstage for the first performance and then I switched places with another mom. I got to watch the second gathering while she took my spot backstage. It’s always a wild morning and it’s never perfect, but it was great nonetheless. I love watching the boys (and all the kids, really) get up on stage and share the Christmas message with our church. Jeremy also has extra platform time on this special Sunday, so he leaned into the beach theme. It’s not often he can be on stage in a Hawaiian print shirt and shorts on a Sunday morning.
The musical was obviously the main event this last week, but the main event around our house was Jeremy building the new bookcases we picked up at Ikea when we were in Portland for the For King + Country concert. Jeremy built them Thursday after work and I dove into book rearranging right away. I started with the new bookcase we added to the playroom. Our playroom books along with some books from the boys’ room went onto the new bookcase. I moved the board games out of the playroom closet and into the open space made my the moved books. I’m hoping with the games being visible, they will be played more often. Moving some books from the boys’ rooms created space to add to their room collections this coming year.
On Friday, with the playroom complete, I moved on to rearranging the books in our bedroom now that we added an additional bookcase there. Our count is up to four bookcases in our room. Jeremy has mentioned I’m turning our room into a library. My real dream is to turn the playroom into a library, but that’s probably a decade out, so it’s our room until then! I was able to move some décor items from the top of the bookcases on to the top shelves. The Billy bookcases from Ikea are so tall. I like having décor on the top shelf so that the top row of books isn’t too hard to reach (I’m short). I was able to move the Bibles and commentaries to their own section (yay) and now we have space on the non-fiction bookcase. We now have two fiction bookcases with plenty of room to add to our home library as well.
Before adding two more bookcases, things were getting tight and adding new books was becoming like a Tetris puzzle. Now there is breathing room again on our shelves. I can add books without messing up the categories and order in place. It feels good. Seeing the blank space on the shelves is a bit of a siren song. Growing a home library is a slow and deliberate process (for me, anyway). I might want to fill in all the gaps right now, but I realize this project set us up for growth in the future. I can live with the open space and dream about the new books that will someday fill those gaps.
Here we are less than two weeks until Christmas!!! The Christmas musical is behind us and we have only two more days until we are on Christmas vacation. I am very much ready to wrap up the school year for 2023 and enjoy the change of pace that comes with the holidays. Wishing you all well as you celebrate this season!
Amy Scott's Thoughts 