I will crush you

This one has been waiting in the blog "dock" for some time now, the problem being that I haven't felt particularly humored by it in the first place. However, my friend got me laughing about this so much that I just have to post it.

I will go through time backwards so you'll read this post and then need to re-read it so everything will make sense.

The other night, I got to have dinner with some friends and on the way to the restaurant the general bantering of our children went on for a few minutes. I casually gave my prediction of my youngest daughter's social life as a teenager (she is only four).

"She is the best hugger and can easily get people wrapped around her feminine little fingers. She'll get a guy on her devious little hook. He'll buy her all kinds of goodies and when she gets tired of him, she will crush him."

My friend chimed right in, "We know. We found out when your family sang in church. She looked around the congregation and individually crushed each one of us."

(Her comment is what brought on my laughing, belly laughing over the whole incident - and thus the swapasmile post).

Going back about six weeks, my little family - my children and I -- performed a musical number in Sacrament Meeting of our regular 3-block church time. I know we were quite the spectacle, which is why I have pushed it back in my mind and memory.

Two weeks prior, we got a "friendly" call from Sister So-and-So asking if we, I mean they could present the song, "I Lived in Heaven a Long Time Ago". I confidently assured her that my children would be happy to do so.

I immediately enlisted the help of a talented musician in the ward who might be able to help jazz up the song a bit so that my amateur musicians might be able to perform it. With two children playing the violin and one son willing to put himself out there for just about anything, I thought it would be a snap. I was SO. Very. Wrong.

The Talented Musician gave me three ideas of ways to perform the primary song. I immediately went to task teaching, cajoling the children for practicing this pieace. Let me remind you of my timetable -- TWO WEEKS. My youngest daughter immediately said, "Nope - I'm not going up there." My other children were OK with it. My daughter - the oldest - made such a valiant effort to learn the piece. My son gave me heartburn every time we tried to practice. His ideas were different than mine.

When The Talented Musician :-) agreed to accompany us on the piano, she suggested I sing with the kids, to which I replied, "No, they will be abe to do it." (I was secretly thinking, "there is no way I am going up there). She also suggested that since the youngest wouldn't play her violin, she could at least just hold a picture of Jesus Christ. I thought, "yeh, that could work".

Saturday morning, the day before the performance arrived and we were all (The Talented Musician, myself, three "happy" children, and a very nice violinist/techy guy in the ward) at the church building for a rehearsal. It did not go well. I knew, then and there, that I would need to get up on that stand and sing the song.

I don't think I have ever truly felt like I was going to throw up at the thought/idea of performing (my only comparison is high school track - the state track meet ---agghh). I called The Talented Musician and said, "I need a pep talk, I am really nervous about this." Of course, she reassured me and told me to just sing right in my son's ear and no one else would hear me (I don't sing soprano - let's cut to the chase here).

Fast forward to the Sunday performance: we went up there, all four of us. My violin-playing daughter, the happy one, sang her little heart out as though she were Carrie Underwood herself (our performance included one verse of all of us just singing and then two verses of just two of us singing while the other played the violin - the youngest child was the wild card who was supposed to chime in whenever she pleased and hold up a picture of The Savior, who Himself must have gotten a real kick out of this whole ordeal).

I kept my son in tune with the piano and violin (which is MUCH harder than I ever thought it would be - to help a child do this) and fidgeted with the picture the youngest was supposed to be holding up, all while singing with a smile on my face.

Believe me, there was no faking the HUGE sigh of relief I gave when that was over.

I later found out that my sweet, little, "Best Hugger" daughter, stood up there and scowled the entire time.  She didn't crack a smile.

Now you know why I have kept this under wraps. I think I am getting nervous hives just remembering it all.