go tell it on the mountain

what would Christmas be without little kids belting out Christmas caroles?

that was our morning ... 108 children under the age of 5 singing about mangers and stars and baby Jesus.

but you really haven't lived until you've sung along to "Go Tell It On The Mountain" with 108 children under the age of 5.

lovely preschool director warned us that we, the packed house of moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas and great grandmas, might have to carry the verses but that the kids really, really loved to sing the chorus all by themselves.

in other words, back off you chorus-hogging adults and let the kids have their moment in the sun.

so this is what it sounded like at 9:00 this morning as 108 children under the age of 5 belted out (and by "belting out" i really mean hollering at the top of their lungs) ..."Go Tell It On The Mountain" ...

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blahhhhhhhh, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah-UH

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN OVER THE HILLS AND EVERYWHERE-HAIR
GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN THAT JESUS CHRIST IS BORN.

they were so loud it almost scared me. especially mr. striped shirt on the front row with his head thrown back. i think he's packing an extra lung or two in that scrawny little body based on his obvious vocal, um, "abilities".

it was cute. i cried. just like "momo" used to do at my piano recitals.

by the way, john and i may have set a record for crappy parenting as today marked the 1,220th straight event since june 2007 where we have actually toted a camera with a dead battery to one of our darling children's public events.

yep, we missed photographing riley's knighting ceremony where she kneeled like a camel to receive an award from some guy dressed up like the giant-turkey-leg-vendor at one of those medieval rennaissance festivals.

we missed photographing her baptism in the river ... got the pre-baptism where she's standing there in the rushing water waiting but right as i switched off the dying camera in order to salvage the last remaining shreds of camera juice the action started and i actually captured some moving footage of my feet as i scrambled to turn the camera back on. oh, and while i was fooling with the camera taking lovely pictures of my feet, i missed actually watching her baptism. so i'm pretty happy about that.

and, yes, we missed photographing mr. dude's christmas pageant this morning. although the 7 foot tall guy sitting in front of me with the 12 foot camera and the flash you can see from the space shuttled didn't.

he was a bit of a distraction so i coughed on his back.

i'd regale you with all the other events we've missed photographing but i forgot them already.

that's, generally, why you tote cameras to these type of milestone events in the first place.

so i'll blog about it instead and chuckle someday about the photography gap in the kids lives the year we picked up and moved to texas and mommy and daddy had a hard time remembering to put on clean underwear everyday, much less charge the camera battery.

by the way, it's in the charger right now. i've learned my lesson. it's going to be a good Christmas. i can tell already.