Mom! Dad! Did you see me? Did you like my tinsel halo?!!!

Well, it's that time of year for the school Christmas pageant. At least, it is if your child is fortunate enough to attend a school that can call it a "Christmas" pageant. Our daughter Ellie sang with the third graders, while we hunched in the back bleachers taking distant fuzzy pictures, and thinking the same thing all the other parents were:

.....OK, how soon is the part where MY kid is singing?….…My butt’s getting sore on this bleacher seat….…Geez, that one loud kindergartner sure has a lousy sense of pitch!…….Finally! Ours is up next!…….Why won’t the principal just shut up and sit down so we can GET ON WITH IT!!! …………OK, here they come….THERE SHE IS! ………….Look she’s singing! All the way up there, alone in that pack of other kids! And we’re not having to pull any strings or move any rods or anything!. ………Funny how the music teacher's daughter always has a solo........ OK…that’s it. Is it over? Let’s beat it out of here fast. ………….. Why does the classroom she’s been taken to have to be all the way at the far end of the building? The parking lot’s going to be a zoo by the time we get out to the car!

…………..“ELLIE! THAT WAS FANTASTIC! YOU SOUNDED BEAUTIFUL! I LIKE THE ONE YOU DID WITH THE HAND MOTIONS!”