My voice (along with the rest of my body and mind) is tired!

Several weeks ago, a member at church approached me about an opportunity to audition for a new Acappella Praise & Harmony album. He is intimately involved with this project and I couldn't help but be excited at the thought of getting to record under the direction of Keith Lancaster! That name probably doesn't mean much to a lot of people, but I grew up listening to Acappella and AVB. I remember the group way back when it was just Keith and Rodney Britt (pretty much the best bass that has ever walked the earth... I'm just sayin'). The first concert I ever attended was an Acappella concert. In my eyes, this man is a LEGEND!

My Papa and I ended up asking Matthew, my brother, and Audrey M. (another girl from church) to fill out our quartet. We recorded and I am pretty proud of our finished product! If I knew how to post audio here, I would do it. In the meantime, you can check out www.xanga.com/sbbh and click on the audio tab. It is the most recent entry.

We sent in our audition earlier this week and we should get a "yes" or "no" within a couple weeks. It was hard to schedule my recording time around all my midterms, though! I think I did okay on my tests, but what a stressful week. On top of the aforementioned obligations, I sang in a wedding on Saturday, which of course included a rehearsal on Friday evening. To say I had a busy week is quite an understatement!

My cousin, Andy, and I were asked to sing "When God Made You" and "Lucky" in the wedding. I've known both of those songs for a while now and learned my part weeks ago. You can imagine my chagrin when we started the rehearsal and Andy didn't know the songs very well yet.

Yikes!

We played it off for the rehearsal. After we practiced the ceremony, we watched a video that someone had made for the bride and groom. I have known the groom as long as I can remember and have gotten acquainted with the bride over the past couple years. They are such sweet people and seeing the love they had for each other and the love that all those in attendance had for them - well, it just gave me the warmest feeling. The video showed pictures of each of them growing up, and at one point the groom's very pregnant sister came on the screen and her voice came over the loudspeaker. She told them that she wanted to be there so badly, but that the doctors wouldn't let her come and that she loved them so much. I am not doing it justice, but there was not a dry eye in the church. It was so bittersweet. Her words were precious, but we all wished she could have been there.

Andy went home and practiced, so during the ceremony it went off without a hitch - except for the recessional where I got so caught up in watching the beautiful bride and groom that I missed my entrance! Thankfully no one was paying attention to the singers at that point. :)

The reception was beautiful, but cold. Cold is preferable to raining for an outdoor event, though, so we were all thankful!

Hopefully I'll have pictures to post soon. I borrowed Matthew's awesome camera during the reception and for the first time, took some great pictures. Pioneer Woman has introduced me to the world of photography from behind the lens. I had a great time playing with the aperture and manual focus! I thought I did a pretty good job for my first time! I'll let you be the judge of that when I finally get them on here, though.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!