Favorite Songs

Originally, Joel's favorite hymn was "I'll Fly Away". Now he likes most hymns we sing at church, and sings then frequently - "We're Marching to Zion", "The Solid Rock", "Amazing Grace", "God Has Been My Refuge Daily", and "Man of Sorrows". His favorites, however, are "When the World My Heart is Rending" and "Sing the Wondrous Love of Jesus". It's so sweet to hear him singing, "I love Jesus, hallelujah, I love Jesus, hallelujah, yes, I do love Jesus." This, of course, is not the exact way the words go in the song, but he loves singing them. It is usually very easy to tell what he's singing - if the melody and words aren't exact, then his rhythm is good and vice versa. You'll hear this mish-mash of grunts and "huhs" and then comes his little high pitched, "when we all get to Heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be".

Another favorite of Joel's is the Hallelujah Chorus. We went to a sing along Messiah this year in Fort Worth, and he was mesmerized. He imitated the conductor quite well, and really liked the "big guy" - either the tenor or bass, I'm not sure which - and the girl in red - the soprano. He also got to go see a real life double bass. He was quite intimidated by its size, and didn't even want to touch it when offered the opportunity. Anyway, the Hallelujah Chorus is not at the end of the Messiah, it's right in the middle of it. However, at sing alongs they usually change it up a bit and switch to the Chorus right after "Worthy is the Lamb" before the Amens start. To top it all off, we sang the Chorus twice at this sing along. Quite fun. Now we sing the Hallelujah Chorus at least once a day, in addition to it being our flossing teeth song. You see, all the "ahs" in it aid in reminding Joel to keep his mouth open while I'm flossing his teeth. Joel climbs up on the closed toilet, stands up and says, "sing hallelujah". So I do. "Fahr thah Lahrd Gahd Ahmnipotent Reignath...."