photo (edited in camera+)  of the journaling card that accompanied the tickets…all ready for my project life album!

…my birthday gift from katie & sara included tickets to the atlanta symphony’s christmas concert and dinner after at our favorite bistro vg.  needless to say, we had a ball.

of course cameras are prohibited during the concert; this is the pre-concert warm-up

the concert was amazing. 150+ voices (plus another hundred or so with the combined choruses) accompanied by a full orchestra. they opened with o come emmanuel and it brought tears to my eyes. the hallelujah chorus was just as beautiful. we also loved the vivaldi piece with the violin solo and especially enjoyed the morehouse glee club’s betelehemu (accompanied by drums and handclaps – it was a work of art!).

sara, katie, mary

and of course bistro vg was our choice for a post-concert dinner (and cocktails).

loved the snowflakes hanging in the bar. and the food (I have no photos to share, but you can probably guess we started with the cheese plate and then shared the arugula salad, spinach pizza and scallops…and a cranberry brown butter tart for dessert – complete with a candle and one last birthday wish – that photo is on katie’s phone 🙂 was delicious as always.

but most of all I enjoyed the time with these two lovely women. who occasionally made me laugh so hard I cried. there was a good bit of wedding talk (I can only imagine that’s going to continue for six or so more months!) and talk about training for our half marathon (and a half ironman that katie is doing next fall) and italy in may 2014 (for sara’s graduation) and santa and christmas and ….

we all had a lovely time.

mary, katie, sara (we’re all about the same height – you can tell who was wearing the high heels!)