Amuse Bouche #21 - It's Christmas Concert Season

Fala! This is a Moose Boosh and I'm Bridget. It's the holiday season. So here you're getting just a little bit of Bridget before our weekly release of Dinner Plus Drinks on Sunday. And this week I'm continuing my talk about traditions with one of my very favorite traditions, which I started this year: kids' Christmas concerts. Last year, COVID, we didn't get to do any of the fun, like uh school age Christmas performances. My oldest was in preschool, so we didn't like go into the school and do any fun, you know, we just didn't do any of those type of things. So this year um we had the joy of experiencing our very first Christmas concert as my oldest is in kindergarten. So let me paint the picture. We get a note home in his communication folder, like I don't know, two weeks before the performance. And it's like, hey, your kid's having a Christmas concert, and it's kindergarten and first grade, and the theme is like, how do dinosaurs say Merry Christmas? And so they read a book and sing some songs, and okay, it's at the Badger High School gym, and you have to dress up. And I'm like, uh oh, this is gonna be a problem because Elliot is full on. I only want to wear basketball shorts and shirts and workout clothes all the time, right? He's a boy. So I'm like, okay, Elliot, I'm preparing you. You've got to get dressed up in two weeks, like one day for two hours in two weeks. And he cried. He started to cry. I'm sure it was fork, like forced alligator tears, I don't remember, but he was very upset. So, okay, let's look at sweaters together. Like, what can we do? Um, so we started, I just pulled up my phone and he like thinks online shopping is a riot because he likes getting mail. So we just started like, what can we order, Elliot? Plus, like, there's two stores in Lake Geneva. I feel like every kid was gonna have the same sweater from Target. And so uh he said he wants a Rudolph sweater, Elliot. Okay, Rudolph sweater it is. So we're scrolling, we're scrolling. The thing is, Elliot's um, Elliot is very tall for his age, so he is in much larger size than like average kid his age. So five-year-old sweaters that are like cute Christmas sweaters, but in his size, very hard to come by because his size does not correspond with his age group. So it's really sad. Like, you know, it's all like scary nine-year-old adolescent boy things when really my kid's only five. So he found a sweater he liked. I was so excited. It's a Rudolph sweater, it's festive, it's fun. He's gonna be excited. Well, let me tell you, the sweater wasn't exactly Rudolph so much as like a buck, like that you would shoot, like a hunting's looking sweater, had ornaments hanging from its antlers and a light-up nose. So we ordered the sweater. Um, more on that, or I'm gonna talk about that in Dinner Plus Drinks, so I'll just leave the sweater as is. I probably said too much already. But anyway, the Christmas concert comes and there was a fun little raffle that the music department did. Um, if you wanted to donate to the music department, you every dollar one um put you in a raffle to win a front row seat, which I thought was a really cool way to like raise money for your department. Um, I love the music teacher at his school. She's great with kids, like just really cares about her job, it seems. I happen to know her dad from some of my work in the city. We hired him. Um he's also a musician, so we hired him for some things. So just like a nice family. Um, so I was like, okay, I have a $10 bill, I'll just throw that in. And it's like it, I'm sure everyone's gonna do this, so I'm not thinking I'll win tickets, right? Well, I did, so that was really exciting. So I won front row seats, so like Ellie was super excited, I was super excited, and what it taught me is ding ding, I'm gonna have great content for a moose boosh because being in the front row, I can watch every kid, which means I'm here to talk to you about all the kids of the Christmas pageant, and you know what I mean. I'm gonna start listing them all here and tell a little thing or two about them. You know, the nose picker, the crotch itcher, etc. So I found like I thought I'd have all this time to like watch all these kids because I'm in the front row and I have to look invested. And it, you know, I I thought the concert was gonna be long and a little bit uh uh a little bit longer than I was prepared for, but it wasn't. So I actually didn't like have as much time to stare at all the happenings, but it was on our this Christmas concert is on YouTube, so you can watch it. I will put a link to it in the show notes. And I went back and reviewed it and did my research for this episode to tell you about all of the many kids of Christmas pageants. So here we go. The first kid you always have is the impatient one. This is the kid that's standing on the risers that looks like he has to pee because maybe he does have to pee because you also have the kid who did not pee before the concert. Um, this kid's just twiddling his thumbs and looking generally like he doesn't, he or she doesn't want to be there. I apologize ahead of time if I do not say he or she. I um will probably default to he because my son is a he and that's what's in my head as we are uh as I'm talking through this. So the impatient one. The next one, the one who steals the show. And I've gotta say, I expected to have that one. This one typically um in my head that I remember is like a young girl who's just the dancing one. So the one who steals the show, the dancing one. So most of the kids did dance because there's dance moves involved, but there's usually one that's just like going crazy. Sadly, I didn't really see someone doing that this year. Now, there was like a million kids because it was kindergarten and first grade. So I will review the video again, but I didn't see the one that steals the show, but that is one of the many kids of Christmas pageants. The next one is the one who looks like they're gonna fall asleep. And that was my kid this year. So this Christmas sweater I talk about is a little too big, but he had to have it. So he's up there with a sweater that's too big. He needs a haircut because he hates to get it cut, so I hate to do it. So he looks shaggy. And this was like basically at his bedtime by the end of the concert. So he just looked like, oh yeah, crap, I need to sing. So he was not the only kid. There were many kids that were up there looking like they were gonna fall asleep. The one who was gonna fall asleep. Alright, the next one, this one's my favorite. The one who isn't singing at all. There was a kid over and over and over. They kept showing him on the video, not even pretending to sing. Not lip syncing, nothing. Just standing there staring at the crowd. Which is awesome because honestly, I talked to Elliot about it because when he first walked in the gym, he looked super nervous. And I was like, yeah, there's like I would say there was 300, maybe 250 adults. So these little kids are coming out and having to sing to like 300 adults. That's incredibly intimidating. So this one kid, and I'm sure there were more, just I was probably quite intimidated by the large crowd. So the one who isn't singing at all. The next one, the one who's doing all the moves wrong or backwards. This is the best because, like, I feel like I can't choreograph a dance right now. So friends like Miss Josie, who choreograph young kids dancing, bless you. Because how do you get them all to go in the same direction when they're supposed to? These kids are punching each other as they're trying to do like fun Christmas moves with their arms or like, you know, I don't know, making reindeer ears on their head, and so there's always one that's doing every move wrong or backwards. This one surprised me. The ones with all the makeup on. So I don't know because my son is five, my daughter is only two. Maybe when she gets that age, she might be very interested. But there was someone that had like an incredible amount of makeup on their five-year-old. And I think some makeup on a little kid is cute and fun. You're like, oh, they're interested in mom's makeup. But this for some reason rubbed me the wrong way. Like, very dark lipstick, like felt like a lot of powder, and I hope it was like a I don't know. I hope it was maybe part of like a costume that she was trying to do, but um, it was a lot of makeup. So it just caught me off guard. Uh, not right, wrong, or otherwise. I have no idea. I I can't judge. I do not have a daughter that age, um, or a son that's interested in wearing makeup at this point. So I don't know. Next up, the one who might fall off the risers. This terrifies me every year, especially Elliot. So he's always in the last row because he's tall. So he's always on the top riser, so he's not blocking other kids. And I am always nervous that he's just gonna like lose balance and fall off the back of the riser. And now I did notice that like their teachers hang out in the back, but like the teachers also have kids who are performing, so they also come out to the front and see their kids. And anyway, there's always one kid that looks like it's they're gonna fall off the risers because they're jam-packed in there. So they're they're like trying to do all these dance moves, and like what this teaches me is like kids are just much more coordinated than adults. So Elliot's very tall, his center of gravity is different. I really was nervous he was gonna fall off, but these kids killed it. They were dancing up there and singing and hopping around, and no one fell off. So good job, kids. The nose picker. This was the first one I wrote because there is always a kid that is picking their nose. And like it's probably the kid that's also not singing because they're just a little bit bored, wondering, so they're picking their nose up there. Um, we talked a little bit about the one who is not singing at all. What about the lip synker? Now, good for this kid. And this kid is not necessarily lip syncing the actual lyrics, but more just moving their lips to look like they're singing. And I get it. I again was amazed that these kids, kindergarten, you know, five, six, seven years old. I don't know, are you seven in first grade or just five and six? Whatever. How do they remember all these lyrics? Like these weren't, these weren't like um we sang Frosty the Snowman, but all the other songs were not normal, like quote, normal traditional Christmas songs. So they were like the North Pole rock and roll, and they've worked hard on this, and I'm truly amazed by it. I know that sounds silly, but like this is a lot to remember in their brain, and they all remembered it, so good job. And lastly, mentioned this in the beginning: the crotch scratcher. There is always a girl and a boy, or many girls, many boys, that are like itching their tights and maybe scooting their dress up, and then boys, man, do I know it, constantly playing with their areas. So, unfortunately for the kids in the front row of the risers, you can see this. Fortunately for me, I didn't see my kid do this often because he was in the last row, although I'm sure he did many, many times throughout the evening. So this is just a fun little look at Christmas pageants. It's early. We had ours early on December 1st. So it was really, really awesome, and I'm so grateful the schools took the time to do it. Um, I know not all the grade levels get to do it, so I'm I'm really grateful that my kid did. And thanks to the Sun Den staff for allowing it. Um, it was so fun. And if you have Christmas pageants coming up, think of all of these. And if you have other ones, like let me know when you go to your kid's Christmas pageant. Send me a note at hello at dinnerplusdrinks.com and say, Bridget, what about the blank? Like the kid that always does this, because it's so funny. Uh so enjoy your Christmas pageant season season, and I will be back next week with more Christmas tradition fun. Bye bye.