So, it’s a week until Christmas.  Yay!  I’m actually enjoying the Christmas spirit this year.  I’m just so thankful to be with my family, it’s going to be a fantastic holiday.

Last Friday night I drove home from Grand Forks, and arrived in Omaha around midnight.  The next morning I got up way earlier than I wanted so that I could rehearse music with my parents.  We were doing the music at our church’s over-40’s Christmas party.  Now, many years ago, my parents and I performed our take on gospel music quite regularly.  However, it’s been about 7 years since the last time we performed anything for anyone.  I had a grand total of one rehearsal with my parents going into the music presentation on Saturday night, and it didn’t go too badly.  I managed to get video of the performance, and I thought I’d share part of it tonight.  (Hopefully, I’ll be able to share the gospel music part in a few days.)  Here’s the video of my family covering the Christmas “classic” Leroy the Redneck Reindeer:

My mama is playing the autoharp and dad is playing the banjo.  I’m not playing an instrument (although, I’m about to get serious about learning mandolin), but I am singing with the group.  It was a lot of fun.

This song has been a bit special to our family, because my Grampa’s (the one who passed this summer) first name was Leroy.  The first time we performed this song was for him at family Christmas many years ago.

That wasn’t the only reminder of Grampa Saturday night.  Every year for Christmas we’d give Grampa a can or box of ribbon candy.  As long as I can remember he always got ribbon candy.  Well, at the party on Saturday night, there was a white elephant give-away.  My dad picked a package, and when opened found it was a box of ribbon candy.  The exact kind of ribbon candy that we got for Grampa.  It was a bittersweet moment.  Kind of seemed like Grampa was looking down on us, letting us know he’s thinking about us.