silent night

We're well into the New Year, but that Christmas carol won't leave me alone. 
We have an extra little person in our home, making a grande total of 8 children to cook lunch for.  i've got a steaming pot of potato soup on & Cai has a double batch of biscuits in the oven.  It's the "lunch rush". 

Mollen is seated at the piano playing and singing Silent Night.  It's nothing like any version of Silent Night you've ever heard.  If you're familiar with the musical term, "boom chucka," well, that's the genre she's playing in.  The tempo is allegro... or maybe more like 'break-neck', the volume FORTISSIMO, and have i mentioned that i birthed a soprano?  Yeah, that girl's got some range & she's throwing in the vibrato like it's going out of style.  Gagey has stolen a toy from Ephraim & Ephraim is squealing loudly for it to be given back.  Our extra girl is playing a nice little descant on the upper half of the piano while i'm firing commands to get the table set, the biscuits out of the oven, cups filled with water and toys picked up off the floor...

Suddenly Cai locks eyes with me and states, "There's never really a quiet moment around here, is there?" & then she bursts into song, playing the 'air' piano and mimicking her sister.

i stop what i'm doing... oven mitt on my hand, completely absorbed in *this moment*...
Cai's eyes are dancing - and i'm overcome. 

i burst out laughing and she does too... tears come to our eyes and we collapse on the floor- in the middle of the complete and utter mayhem that surrounds us.   

Oh, God.  Was this the kind of chaos that you were born into?  A stable full of noisy animals in a city that was so overcrowded that there was no room for your family in the inn?  Was there the drone of milling crowds, the shriek of children, the cacophony of music in the distance?  Could you hear the shouts of terrified shepherds as a sky full of angels sang lustily in the night air?  Was *this* the "silent night" that welcomed you? 

"Soup's on..." i call... over the din.  The piano mercifully stops, and little ones are plopped into seats as we gather 'round our crowded table.

Come, Lord Jesus... silent night or not, we want You.