St. Nikolaus and the Choir

So I have finally gotten round to joining a choir again.
Yesterday was my first practice and it was a lot of fun. It is a "gospel" choir is called "Heart and Soul" and is lead by a woman called Hedwig von Mayerhofer. She really knows her stuff!
The reason for the " " on the "gospel" bit is because I don't really think that "good ole German white folk" can really sing gospel, but we are pretty good anyways!!! :-)

Here are 2 audio samples (by another choir) of the two songs we learned yesterday.

Between Heaven and Earth

and

To the left, to the right

Oh did I tell you already that I talked a friend into making the ears and tails? She did a really great job with it too. My kids are now the best looking mice in the play!!!!!!!!!
The ears and tails are currently in school but when they come back I will take a picture. Promise!

I think most of you know, that I am still signed of sick (have been for quite a while now) and it is now getting to the stage, where I am being swamped with paperwork from various branches of the government. They all want to know almost exactly the same things but their questionnaires are all different and all in various forms of legalese! Not fun!



Apart from that it is St. Nikolaus of Myra day tomorrow. In Germany it is tradition that the children put a boot outside the door and during the night St. Nikolaus comes and puts sweets in the boots of good children and coals in the ones of the bad ones, very much like Santa Clause (Father Christmas for my English readership :-) ). You can find some more information here

This evening we were out chasing "Rumpelklausen".
The Rumpeklausen are an "Allgäuer" tradition that has it's origins somewhere with the Celts. The young, unmarried lads from a village or town dress up in rags and furs and run around the village chasing away the demons and bad spirits and scare little children into good behavior while they're at it! LOL
This website will give you a little insight into the tradition although it is in German, but I think pictures in this case say more than a thousand words.
So as I said, we were out for a walk this evening and although my girls have rather big mouths when it comes to teasing and taunting the Rumpelklausen when they are far away across a street, they ran pretty, darn fast, when the Klausen came after them...



My kids are actually quite lucky because in our home we have a symbiosis of German, British and American traditions. We celebrate St. Nikolaus day, the Christkind comes on Christmas Eve and Santa Claus/Father Christmas brings the rest of the presents.
I think my girls are currently at the stage where they know that all these things are not real, but they choose to believe it anyways so they quite anxiously put their boots out and went to bed very well behaved!

Let's see if St. Nikolaus brings anything tonight...



Last but not least, here is a little treat I found today (or rather my mum found it and told me about it):
There is a band called "Fisher" and they have put 8 Christmas songs on their website to download for free, including a cover and inside artwork!
I think the songs are lovely and I also think that this is a very nice Christmas gesture.
So go ahead and download a bit of Christmas spirit into your home:
Fisher Christmas Songs Downloads