To all our readers;
You will be reading this segment of our Red Hat outings in the New Year of 2019. We all hope your holidays were filled with joy and love and peace. May this year bring us all a feeling of friendship, warmth, and the hope that we can enjoy each other’s company in every Red Hat way possible.
On December 8th we drove to Burlington planning to see the Merrimack Valley Bell Ringers perform at St. Malachy’s Church.
Find out what's happening in Melrosefor free with the latest updates from Patch.
We were pleasantly surprised that along with the Ringers the Bay Colony Brass band did a wonderful lively performance of six songs.
For vocal entertainment the St. Margaret’s Choir and the St. Malachy’s Music Ministry gave us their versions of some wonderful old traditional Christmas music.
Find out what's happening in Melrosefor free with the latest updates from Patch.
It was interesting to watch the precision and the execution of the compositions that the ringers preformed.
The music resonated through the church with a cheerful holiday sound, and a wonderful deep feeling of emotion.
There was an audience participation sing along and we all left with a feeling that Christmas was very close at hand.
December 10th we had our regular monthly meeting at the home of one of our members. This was a holiday party meeting which meant pot luck, recycled gifts and plans for the upcoming year 2019.
We arrived at Virginia’s home to be welcomed by wonderful holiday displays all around the living room. We unpacked our party gifts and food and started a serious meeting.
We discussed things to do and places to go in January, February and even into March. Because of the season, all of these trips are “weather permitting”.
After an official close to the meeting we started putting out the food and drinks. There was coffee, diet sodas and Sparkling Apple Cider to toast the day and the year.
The food was varied and delicious, (most of our members are great cooks). We had regular salad, seafood salad, chicken salad with almonds and cranberries. We had shrimp and macaroni salad and rolls. Then came the desserts..Lemon cupcakes and colorful mini cupcakes then pecan fudge slices with vanilla ice cream.
The Yankee swap always makes us laugh as gifts are exchanged and sometimes exchanged again. An array of good “stuff” was passed back and forth until we were all satisfied with what we got.
We had time to chat and relax and reflect on this past year
Some of our members have had medical setbacks but we were all here today to celebrate our lives and our Red Hat friendship.
December 16th and it was off to the Melrose Highland Church to hear Happy Holly Days performed by “ladies First” and friends. The group of four women Christine Corbett, Jane Corrigan, Jean Dancewics, and Carolina Lanney were joined with Brendan Carrol and Tom Risser.
The hour long performance included songs like We need a little Christmas, A Place Called Home, Jingle Bells, Mary Did You Know and other happy holiday tunes.
We left the entertainment upbeat and smiling and headed for Wakefield and Massimo’s restaurant for dinner.
The atmosphere was pleasant, the service perfect and the food outstanding, with leftovers to go.
As we end this year of 2018 we wish all our readers a healthy and happy Red Hat New Year.
