The day had come… The Swedish Lucia Celebration in Dallas. Up at 5 am to get ready and hit the road at 7. Soloists started their rehearsal around 8. My morning was weird. I took a shower and washed my hair. When I came out and was going to brush it, I couldn’t get it out. As soon as I moved it all tangled up again. I had to go back into the shower and put more conditioner in. It was so weird.

Anyway, off to church we go and dress rehearsal start. As always we run out of time. I had three solos; a Swedish Christmas song “Koppången”, Oh Holy Night in Swedish and the first verse of Silent Night in Swedish. The pianist, Sheryl (whom was beyond amazing) had the scores for Oh Holy Night in a quite high key. I could do it but not my preference. Okay she said, I may not have them in the key of G (I think it was), I’ll just have to wing it. That was five minutes before the show started!!! So when I walked up on stage to the microphone, I had no clue where my first note was going to be. I had to figure that out in her interlude. It went great! There was a hiccup in the middle but nothing bad. She was sitting behind me on the organ and we couldn’t have any eye contact so I didn’t know what she was doing and she didn’t know what I thought either. The other two songs went pretty good actually. I feel that I need to take a couple of voice lessons. It’s so many years ago now and I am losing my technique. That is not good. Just need some help to get it back to where it needs to be so I can be even better!

I haven’t seen any videos of the show yet. I know there were people taking videos of my performance but not sure I know them personally so they are not shared with me (yet). These are the only pictures I have from the morning so far… and of course… Fika afterwards… not to forget!

When all that was done it was time to drive back home, change clothes to something much warmer and head down to Gun Barrel City. UT Health EMS had a float in the Christmas parade and I had not promised to be there since I didn’t know how tired I would be but I felt I could do it and I wanted to do it so off we go!
I know that parades are cold so I dressed in layers. And am I glad I did!!! I had two layers on my legs and four layers on my upper body plus a turtleneck and a cap. And I was probably the only one who wasn’t cold! I was perfectly dressed. But I didn’t have to be in costume either which made a big difference.

Summer had done a great job with the float. The theme was Marvel Superheroes, and she loves that. It was right up her alley!

It was so much fun! We sang Christmas music for hours while waiting in line up, and while going down the parade route as well, talked to people, and just having so much fun.

I finally came home around 8pm. Exhausted. The dogs thought I had left them forever. It was a long but fun day. I finished it up with a hot chocolate so I knew I would sleep like a rock… and I absolutely did!