Christmas Diaries Day 13: Young and Alive

Today was a busy day, and I can hardly believe that the weekend is a few hours from being over already. Where does the time go?!

Anyway, after a great church service this morning, Luke and I cooked brunch together at home. I can cross another thing off of my list now (cook a meal together). We love having brunch on Sundays.

After that, we went to town to buy a few last minute supplies so that we could finally install some new lights in our hallway and attic! Our house was an office building at one time, so there were fluorescent lights in just about every room when we moved in! I have been absolutely HATING it! After going to town, my parents came over and helped us get rid of the fluorescent lights and install the new ones. I think lighting is so important in a house...just by changing the lighting, you can change the whole atmosphere. The fluorescent lights certainly did NOT provide a calming atmosphere, but the new ones do!!

Here's the new light fixture in the entrance hallway:

I love it! I'm going to hang some ornaments on it for later :-) And obviously we need to paint that little strip white where the old lights were. Apparently the last person who painted the ceiling painted around them :-P

And here are the ones we chose for the attic room, which will be our new living room. It's so big, so we bought two sets of these. They are such an upgrade from the fluorescents! And I love that they are like a cheap version of track lighting, and we can move them and point them any way we want!
And again, we need to paint around them :-P

Okay, now for the best part of the day! Tonight after finishing up the lights and sharing a large pizza with my parents, my mom and I headed to the church to hear the Young and Alive perform. the Young and Alive is a Christmas show choir from my old high school.

The Y&A perform for all the elementary schools in the district. I can remember sitting in the bleachers, watching them perform when I was in first or second grade. I was completely mesmerized by their glittery dresses, cheesy smiles, and corny songs :-P I knew that I just HAD to be in the Young and Alive when I was in high school.

Only junior and senior girls, and sophomore - senior boys were allowed to be in Y&A (there were always too many girls and not enough boys!) My freshman and sophomore years, I joined the choir, was in all the musicals, and even joined danceline so I would have a better chance of making it for Y&A. I tried out at the end of my sophomore year, and was SOOO excited at the choir awards banquet when I found out I had made it!

My junior and senior year, I spent September - November rehearsing day after day during choir, and even staying after school for hours a few nights a week to practice. I will never forget my first performance my junior year when I got to wear my own glittery dress for the first time on stage :-) We had performances just about every evening in December. On the weekends we would have 3 or 4 performances a day. We performed at malls, schools, meetings, churches, office Christmas parties, you name it. We even got a free pass to miss school a bunch of days to go out and perform! Ahh, I loved every minute of it! I feel like I spent more time traveling on a school bus for Y&A than I did with my own family those Christmas seasons. Y&A really was the highlight of my high school career.

The most fun memory I have of Y&A was when we got to travel to Disney World my senior year! We left on December 26 and were gone until January 2. We got to spend 4 days at Disney World and 2 at Universal Studios. We got to do a backstage training session with some of the people who worked there. We got to perform on stage right in the middle of Magic Kingdom. And we even got to be a part of the candlelight processional in Epcot Center with bunches of other students from all across the country. Jody Benson, the voice of Ariel from The Little Mermaid, was the narrator the night we performed in the candlelight processional. It was such a fun thing to be a part of as a senior!

Here is a picture from the candlelight processional in Epcot Center...not the year I was in it, but you get the idea ;-)

Anyway, obviously this was a very special thing to be a part of for me. Every year the Y&A comes and performs at my church, and like I said, tonight we got to go see them. I LOVE watching them perform, although it always makes me feel a little nastalgic :-)

So tonight was a very fun, Christmasy night! I thought about scanning some of my own Y&A pictures from seven years ago and sharing them, so you could laugh at my glittery dress ;-) Maybe some other day, because I believe my old yearbooks are still at my parents' house!

PS...I have decided to move the scavenger hunt deadline to Wednesday, because I know some people aren't quite ready yet! So it will be this Wednesday, December 16!!