Oh Say Can You Sing?

The funniest moment of our trip was definitely at the welcome assembly Kristen’s school put on for us. Everything started out well with teachers and students giving speeches about what a great teacher Kristen is and how much they appreciate her. But things deteriorated quickly when the headmaster announced that the next item on the program was to be a Higgins Family rendition of the U.S. National Anthem. Now if you know anything about our family, you know that we have absolutely NO musical talent whatsoever. None, nada, zilch. But despite our protests, we soon found ourselves standing in front of the crowd, two lines into that monstrous anthem completely off key and unable to contain our laughter any longer. We lost it. I mean LOST IT! I don’t know the last time I've laughed that hard. We had tears streaming down our faces and I couldn’t even stand because I was laughing so hard. After finally composing ourselves, our next attempt at the song resulted in a similar breakdown of laughter two lines into it. It wasn’t until our fourth attempt that we actually made it through the entire song (voices horribly cracking at “the land of the FREE”) and received a standing ovation in response. Our laughing faces beautifully graced the front page of two newspapers the next day and we are expecting a call from American Idol any day now.