About four years ago I asked for a set of hand bells for Christmas. I can’t remember what started the idea but I got it in my head that our family could be a little bell playing family. It could be a fun little hobby all of us could do together. Who doesn’t like to add to their list of unique and quirky talents right?! So I got some bells and after about ten minutes of trying to get my kids to follow any type of instruction with them I put them back in the bag and hid them in my closet before me and every other adult within hearing range went crazy.
Later that same year we went to Florida for a Jones family get together. My parents asked everyone to share a talent for part of our family home evening together. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to try our bells again so we practiced an easy song like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star a for a few weeks before. It was a little rough but I didn’t think it was to bad. We took the bells with us to Florida and when it was our turn to perform we did…and it was awful. You couldn’t even tell what song it was. Everyone was nice and clapped and we moved on. I decided that we weren’t quite ready to be the Terry Bell Band…yet.
Fast forward four years to about a week before Valentine’s Day. I decided to try again! So I got out the bells and found a few songs to play and we practiced. It was much better! We decided to play the ‘Happy Birthday’ song but sing ‘Happy Valentine’s’ instead and record it and send it to our Grandmas and Grandpas for Valentines. It was still a little rocky but after practicing a few times each day for a few days it sounded pretty good. On Valentine’s Day we decided to record it. The first few times did not go well. Twenty plus tries later it was going even worse. We decided to play it one more time and record it and send whatever we got. We did and once again, it was pretty bad. We must have stage fright issues…or general listening skill issues. 🙂 We still sent it and the Grandmas and Grandpas were very generous with their praises. My ears are ready for a break again so I think I will put the bells away and hopefully in another year or two we will be able to really start the Terry Family Bell Band. 🙂
The video below is one of our attempts, Ryan was at work but Emilee’s friend Reese was here so she filled in for him. Notice how Emilee just rings her bell through the whole song whenever she feels like it. Lol!