Okay, this one actually isn't too terrible

Remember the Christmas concert?  Well, in order to get the full grade school experiences, Liza's school does a spring concert, as well.  It was mercifully shorter than the winter concert, and somewhere along the way this year most of the classes found a bucket in which to carry a tune, so it wasn't as painful, either.

The kindergarten and first grade kids performed songs from "Barnyard Moosical," with each class taking the part of a different animal.  Costumes were easy - try to dress vaguely like a farmer,

... and put on a chicken headband right before you go on stage.

Liza's been running around singing her performance song for the past few weeks, so we already knew it was going to be a cute song ... but when you get 22 kids up there doing the Funky Chicken Strut, the cute increases exponentially.

Isn't that impressive?  You can actually understand many of the words they're singing!  Way to go, 5- and 6-year-olds!

2010 Christmas Concert, or, "The Cute! It Burns!"

Friday night Liza's school had its annual winter concert, complete with performances from grades K-7.  I had expected to have to drag Little Miss Stage Fright there kicking and screaming, but apparently she's gotten over that, at least temporarily.  We actually had problems getting through dinner fast enough to make it to the school on time, because she insisted on telling everyone at the restaurant who spoke to her at all every little detail about why she was dressed up and what they were singing and how she felt about it and on and on and on.  I thought our meal would be cold by the time she shut up long enough for the waitress to serve the food :)

The rest of her class were pumped up, as well.  I have a dozen shots from before the show, and every single one of them looks like this:

Her class was pretty much populated by 40 small taffeta-wearing-or-sweater-vested rubber jackhammers on crack.  I'm not sure what the teachers did between when we left Liza in the band room and when she came on stage - it possibly involved large doses of pharmaceuticals or some sort of mind control - but she and the other kids were all well-behaved at showtime.

(that's the legendary Lewis to the right of Liza in the picture)

Their performance was as cute and earshatteringly awful as you can imagine.

Based on data we collected at the show, I'm pretty sure the ability to carry a tune develops sometime early in second grade - the K's and first graders preferred to just shout theirs at the tops of their little lungs.  And by the time the kids hit second grade, the music teacher is sick of having them shout at her, so she hands them all recorders and they honk in dissonant unison for a couple minutes.

I think my favorite moment of the whole evening was when one of the readers from the second grade announced that her "favorite things" (the theme of the show, and what selected kids from each class wrote and read to the audience) included her dog, her teacher, and her school "because I like to blow things up."

Ah, school concerts.  Next time: earplugs and a fully-charged iPod with a new ebook loaded and ready to go.  Doesn't Jason look like he could have used one or both of those to help him weather the evening?

If Liza looks less than thrilled there, it's probably because it was getting close to 9pm at that point, and we were moments away from bundling the limp-as-a-ragdoll performer into the car and heading home.  Well, actually heading to DQ for a celebratory Blizzard, but who's counting?