Hancock Christmas!

OK...

Christmas Cards will be New Year's cards this year. I did a total of 3 recitals, 1 Smyrna rehearsal, 3 Smyrna concerts, 1 benefit concert and the church Christmas program all in the week before Christmas! Needless to say......... no time...... and sore fingers!!!

However, we did get the photo while we gathered together for the Hancock Family photo shoot. We don't have ours edited yet, but here is the group shot.

I'd rather have this bunch for my family than some of the finest folks in the whole world! (They'll all get the joke! ;)

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

Reminder....

Lids4Kids is tonight at the Swansboro Methodist Church at 7:30. We had a great dress rehearsal last night! Jenny Licko looks awesome as ever! www.sheltonmusic.com

Jacy will be singing with me! I'm very excited!

I will try to get my mess together and take a video to post!

Calling Jackie O!

Ms. Jackie,

I don't know your email address, but I know you follow the blog....

The Ward Christmas Party has been changed to this coming Saturday at 6:30 pm. I'm sorry that I haven't called before now to let you know... It's late at night now and I don't want to wake you. If I don't let you know now I will certainly forget by tomorrow, so the blog will have to do! I will still try to give you a call tomorrow. I am on a field trip with Eden for most of the day!

All 6 of the Hancock kids will be in attendance. Mike flies in on Thursday! At least part of us will do a song or two! We would love to see you! I understand that you may have a conflict at work, but we hope that you can come. If you can't make it, please come and visit over Christmas! Leah will be home until the 23rd.... Everyone else will stay through to New Year's!

Merry Christmas!

Love,
Em

Lids4Kids!

My fabulously talented roommate from ECU - Jennifer Licko - has graciously invited me to perform at her annual Lids4Kids Concert in Swansboro next week. Jenny lives in Brazil and is an awesome Celtic musician. You can listen to her music at www.sheltonmusic.com....

Lids4Kids helps to raise money for kids with cancer. Admission to the concert is free, however donations will be gladly accepted. Joella and I will be doing 2 songs.... I'm coming out of retirement for this concert. It should be interesting!

The concert will be at the Swansboro United Methodist Church next Friday, December 9th at 7:30pm.

In other performing news, SuperGrant and his super sister Eden along with his super cousins Jacy and Zoey will be performing in their piano recital on Sunday. They are all very excited! Joella and I will be doing our recital this year with Niki Lewis' piano students. We have loved having Niki with us at CCSA and are looking forward to our Christmas recital!

The Ward Christmas Program will also be on the 20th at 6:30. The Hancock girls will be singing for this one, along with the ward choir and our friends, the Bates'.

I will also accompany the Smyrna kids on their annual Christmas Caroling field trip next week. We get to visit the nursing homes Down East. Its always so much fun! This is Grant's first caroling trip as he was too sick last Decemeber to make the trip. We are very excited! Eden has aged out this year! She's a grown-up 3rd grader, you know!

Music, music everywhere!

Please remember Grant's friend William in your prayers. He had a reaction to his chemo yesterday and has been taken off of the clinical trial he was participating in. William has already done a bone marrow transplant and is now doing a new type of radiation at UNC. He is their very first patient to do this protocol, and he is quite the little trooper! His family is very devestated that he has been removed from his trial as that leaves them not knowing what medicines he will be taking now.... Its extremely complicated! Please pray for William and his parents Mark and Amy and little sister and all of the Bunn family.

Long overdue update!

Grant is home from his monthly clinic visit to UNC. Kevin had to be in Raleigh on Monday for work, so he and Grant made the trip this time. Grant was so excited to be able to spend a couple of days with Aunt Leah and her family in Rollesville. He loves the Steelmans! Clinic was pretty standard..... Spinal tap, IT Methotrexate, Vincristine, and the 1st day of the dreaded Prednisone! Grant asked me this morning if he was on steroids. I told him "yes" and he responded - "well, that's why I feel so funny!" (funny as in cranky and weird, not loving and jovial!) He said that he's going to try to remember that its the medicine that makes him feel so strange and he will try to act and normal as possible! He's such a sweet kid!

Since my last post we've had a lot of fun stuff happening.

Kevin and I took a trip to DC to see the Redskins play the Steelers on Monday Night Football. We had a great trip and really enjoyed the game even though we lost miserably! We got to the stadium really early and spent a couple of hours watching the teams warm up and got to see Steve Young and Emmet Smith do the pre-game show. Fed Ex Field is amazing! It was a beautiful evening for a football game.

Earlier in the day we spent a couple of hours downtown in Washington DC. We visited the Capitol Building, the Washington Monument, the Native American Museum and had lunch at the Smithsonian. Crews were already busy constructing the stage on the steps of the Capitol for the Inauguration in January! I can't imagine how exciting it would be to be on the National Mall for that historic day!

Last month I also was able to do a Twilight trip with my crazy, vampire lovin' girlfriends. We made a day trip to Jacksonville for the movie, went out to dinner and did a bunch of shopping at Sam's. We were giddy like teenagers and wore our Twilight t-shirts and took pictures in front of the theater! It was the most fun ever! I am truly a geek!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We did lunch with the Hancocks and dinner with the Nelsons. We always get to eat A LOT on Thanksgiving. We were excited that Grant was feeling well this year. Last Thanksiving was our lowest of the low! Michael McKinney had recently passed away and we were really missing him. Grant was just finishing a 21 day cycle of Dexamethazone - the worst medicine that he ever had to take! He was 15 lbs heavier than normal from all of the swelling and was completely bald. I had worked myself into such a state that I ended up in the hospital for a colonoscopy to see what was going on. Turns out that stress and anxiety can actually burn ulcers right into your colon! Who knew....

This year life seems almost like normal - as normal as life can be, I guess. We are so grateful for our many blessings, especially for our family and friends. We could have never done this without all of you.

I have thought a lot recently about my Grandma. She passed away in 1997 just a few days before Thanksgiving. She had lived a full and long life and died in a tragic car accident.

My Grandma had 10 children - 7 boys and 3 girls. My dad was her baby boy. She was the happiest, least stressed out, most laid back person I've ever known. She spent her days making bread, taking care of her family, listening to music on her record player, and swinging on her front porch. She had plenty she could have been worried about or pre-occupied with. Her life was not without loss and sorrow. She lost a child to leukemia, my uncle Denny. He was buried on his 9th birthday. She lost my uncle Ralph in a boat accident just a few years before she died. She sent 4 sons to the military. They served in wars. Her husband, my grandfather, was a commercial fisherman. They lived in the most humble of circumstances in a tiny 3 bedroom home. But she was happy!

Of all of the words I could think of to describe Grandma - the best would be - happy!

I'm grateful for my grandma and the lessons she taught me. I want to be more like her!

I could go on forever, but the school just called and my chemo boy wants to come home! I'll go get him and be happy about it! Maybe I'll even make some bread today!