December 5

Tonight we went to see Handel's Messiah. It was at a beautiful local church, so the setting was lovely, and it was free, so the price was right. It was put on by GVSU, and was the students and also some staff and professors, and most of it was really, really fantastic. The guy who sang the tenor solos was absolutely wonderful, and the bass and soprano were also very good. (The alto, however, was quite remarkably not good. It was surprising how much i disliked listening to her.)

It was preceded by a brass ensemble playing a couple of songs, and Zane was absolutely enthralled with them. I think that if the entire concert were nothing but the brass ensemble, he would have been completely happy. Once the chorus got up and started singing, though, he completely lost interest fairly quickly, and spent the rest of the concert sitting on the floor, wiggling in his seat, stripping off his outer shirt, and just being the epitome of misery and boredom. Poor guy.

Houston was also not very interested. He spent the first 10 minutes bouncing his legs like crazy until i couldn't handle it anymore and physically held them down, whereupon he grabbed onto my arm and snuggled against it and refused to let go. I eventually had to extricate myself (i kind of hate having my arms held like that), so then he had to make do with just leaning his head against my shoulder.

The boys were on my left side. That was the "Is it over yet?" side.

On my right were Katrina and my mom. My mom was, y'know, an adult. She really enjoys Handel's Messiah (which is why she came!), so she was quite absorbed in the music. Katrina was also very much enjoying it. She was listening and paying attention and was keeping track on her program of which songs she liked and which ones she didn't. (She really liked the songs by the tenor, "For Unto Us a Child is Born," and most of the other songs by the chorus and really didn't like any of the songs by the alto. So...same as me.)

So i think that this is one of those activities that i can chalk up as "this was probably a good one, because it's a cultural experience and one of the kids really liked it, but i wouldn't do a lot of things like this."