Birthdays...

Yesterday was my Birthday. My sweet husband took the day off. In the morning he stayed home with Liam so I could go get my hair done. (I had a gift certificate from one of my clients as a Thank you from a birth - to go to Bangs salon. I hadn't used it yet and decided to take advantage of the chance on my birthday.) The High school had a half day thrusday as well as friday, so we had a babysitter for the afternoon. Bill had gotten us tickets to see a show in town at the VBC. It was the Keeping Christmas Alive concert series, http://www.keepchristmasalive.org/guests.html
but we went primarily to see Mark Lowry. http://www.rhapsody.com/mark-lowry
We caught a show on t.v. that he did 10-12 years ago, and liked him, so we bought his CD. http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Mark+Lowry&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7SUNA&um=1&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title#
We've loved him for years, and so when Bill said he would be at a show at the VBC in Huntsville on my Birthday, and asked if I'd like to go see it, I said yes.
We went to the Matinee show at 2:00 since our Ward Christmas party was scheduled for that night.
It started out with a Gospel Choir from Chatanooga. My standards are pretty high at this point, especially with the Christmas Festival being only a week ago (not even a full week). Our Choir is so amazing!!! - the choir at the show was o.k. then there were several other acts... One was a group called 3 Lambs and a Ram (a 3 sister and 1 brother violin group), from here in Alabama.
http://lambfamilymusic.com/NewsArticles/Woodmen%20Lamb%20Family%20Article.pdf
Another was a 4 brother group that sang harmonies. The Ball Brothers They were really good, and we bought their christmas CD. http://www.theballbrothers.com/ball2008/about.html
Another little group that we really enjoyed was Mike Ball and the Madison Mountaintop Band. It is a bluegass group with Rep. Mike Ball. He wrote a Christmas Song several years ago, and I really liked their bluegrass sound! Wish I could find a link for his music on line somewhere...

One supposedly big name lady, sings with the Metropolitan Opera, came to town for this concert from Jamaica, and was too tired to sing twice in the day, so they broke the news she'd not be singing to us at hte afternoon performance. Then later in the show, the poor MC had to announce that due to weather... Mark Lawry was not going to be performing. He was finally on a plane and would be there for the night performance and anyone was free to ask for either a refund on their ticket, or we could come back for the night performance... We watched the rest of the show, then rushed home to take the family to the Christmas Party at the Church.
After the fun Christmas party (lots of yummy sweets and foods), a sing along - and someone ratted me out and had the whole ward sing me Happy Birthday! They even made me stand up! I liked the young men who sang the Primary Birthday Song in the middle of everyone else singing the traditional birthday song everyone else was singing. I told my no longer friend who ratted me out, it was a good thing it wasn't a few years ago and that I was medicated because having to be spotlighted and I have been known to cry before by that type of thing... (o.k. so perhaps some of my children come to this shyness thing from me!!!)
Anyway we also had a visit from the 3 Wisemen (I really liked that instead of Santa).
Then we drove the kids all home and though both Bill and I separately thought about just going on in the house (it was 8:30 at night... I was tired), but we headed back to the concert... We got there right as intermission was ending - what timing!!! We got to hear the Blulegrass group - Rep. Mike Ball and the Madison Mountaintop Band. Then the whole reason we had gotten tickets was for Mark Lowry. He was absolutely Hillarious! And then for his finale... he sang Mary Did You Know (which he wrote). http://www.rhapsody.com/player?type=track&id=tra.6574040&remote=false&page=&pageregion=&guid=&from=&hasrhapx=false&__pcode=

We love how he sings it, with such passion and conviction. We wish they would play it on the radio rather than all of the other versions of it. Not that they aren't nice too, but we LOVE the way Mark Lowry sings it himself!

It was a good birthday! One of the best I've had. Thank you to my sweetheart for working so hard to make it good for me. And thank you to my kids for helping out and being good.