This'n'That

Right after my concert, my parents came to visit!  My Dad had suggested we do a family temple trip to do baptisms, but I wasn't sure we'd be able to reserve a spot on such short notice.  But then Craig pointed out that we didn't have school on Friday, so we could just go during the day!  So that worked out beautifully! My Mom and I took turns sitting outside with Camille, who was good as gold for the whole thing.  And that gave us a chance to wander around sniffing all the hyacinths that were blooming all over the grounds.  

And after the temple, my parents bought us dinner at Chuy's, which always makes me happy.  (And, actually, we'd eaten at Torchy's after I picked them up from the airport, so it was a weekend full of amazing Tex Mex!)

Somehow I got roped into directing another choir for church.  This one was a bit strange-- so our ward likes to have "hymn book choirs" where we don't actually practice, we just invite anyone in the congregation to grab a hymn book and come sing during sacrament meeting.  This works pretty well for us, because we have a lot of people who are happy to sing, but most of them are too busy to come to choir practice.  So that's all fine and good.  But this time, for the hymn book choir, the pianist had chosen an arrangement of the hymn that had a (lovely) flute part and a bridge where the choir paused, and then a repeat at the end.  How was the choir supposed to know all this when none of it was in their music???  And they'd asked me to help out the week before by conducting it, so I didn't have a lot of time to figure it out.  

After much hemming and hawing, I did two things.  I broke the rules and actually held choir practice (for a hymn book choir!!!) that Sunday morning.  And actually a fair number of people came!  Way to be supportive, Rivanna Ward!  The people who came included my Mom, because I made her.  (But she did it quite cheerfully, all things considered.)  And then I made a poster board that I could flip as needed with giant words like "PAUSE" and stuff like that.  I should point out that I NEVER made posters like this for the primary kids when I was the primary chorister.  No, that's not true-- I did it ONCE, when we were singing in Spanish.  That was it.  Otherwise, I just expected the kids to learn the music.  (And they always did!)

But also, making posters like that is a big pain and I have terrible handwriting for it.  But I did it just for this.  And I must say-- the choir did GREAT and they sounded wonderful.  I was proud of them.  And, unlike the last time I directed the choir, I wasn't even nervous this time because I knew it was a terrible idea and none of it was my fault, so I felt like if it went well, I could be happy, and if it went wrong, I didn't really care.  Best of all worlds!

The following week was Amy's turn to teach, which was nice since I had my parents there and it's hard to work on stuff like that with company around distracting me.  My Mom was able to tag along to my choir practice, which is fun for me.  We went walking with Adam, which was very nice, but the weather had suddenly turned cold, so it much colder than any of us were really expecting.  Spring this year has been so wild!  (We warmed up after our walk by eating loads of chips and queso at Torchy's!)  And that night we ate at Mission BBQ before the kids headed to their Tuesday activities.  Good times!

Mom and Dad left the next morning, heading to Ohio.  And I ran around like a crazy person trying to get my house in order again.  And I wondered to myself why we hadn't taken more photos together!  I swear, I am the worst at that!!!

UPDATE: My Mom took a couple pictures!  So here are Ryder and my Dad:

And Dad, me, and Kendra!

Together in Song

As usually happens now, Colton's birthday week happened at the same time as TOSVA's Together in Song concert!  So that makes for a very busy time for me!

This year we were doing patriotic songs to celebrate America's 250th birthday, which I loved.  But I did think it was kind of funny-- the songs that the community singers joined us for were so much easier than the music my poor Mom had to learn a couple years ago when she joined me for this concert!  This year it was only four songs, and they included "America the Beautiful" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."  I mean, yes, there were some tricky harmonies in there (thanks, Mack Wilberg!), but at least everyone knows the basic tune for these!  And they were ALL in English!  For comparison's sake, my Mom was singing in Italian AND German with us!  I'm pretty sure she also had like 6 pieces of music to learn, too, and some of them were quite challenging!  The difference between the two concerts is just wild to me and I'm really curious about the change-- if it was just too much for the community singers so Michael purposely made things easier, or if that was just how it worked out this time around.  I'll never know.

But my point in all this is that my Mom was a total rock star for doing that with me and nailing all that tough music!

For a split second Craig could see me, before that tall girl stood right in front of me!

I think at the end we had 170 people all singing "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and it was awesome

This concert is funny, because the weather in March is so unpredictable (or there might be a global pandemic and the whole thing will be cancelled!).  I distinctly remember one year when it was snowing!  But this year was warm and lovely, so I just walked with the kids to Citizen Burger Bar to get dinner after, and that was so nice!  It was fun to celebrate Colton's birthday after a lovely concert!

Guess Who Also Had a Birthday...???

That's right, Colton!!!  This kid is now a teenager!!!!

(It was also concert week for me, so we were quite lucky that I didn't have a long rehearsal on his actual birthday!)  We got to have his dinner and dessert of choice (Korean beef quesadillas and mint brownies, respectively) and the kids sat around watching Interstellar, which made them all very happy!  And I got to re-use the dinosaur candles we bought for Kendra AND the trick candles Ryder and Camille had wanted, so I was pretty happy, too!  Poor Colton couldn't get those stupid candles to go out at all.  We know how to have fun around here!

The next day, after my concert, we got dinner with Grandma and Grandpa at Citizen Burger Bar and ice cream at Chaps, where I got this video that I just love:

Siblings are the best.  How fun are these kids?

And then Colton opened more presents!

Unfortunately, he once again had a present that was super late showing up.  In fact, he just got it today (on the 5th of April, when his birthday was the 13th of March!!!), and when he opened it up--- Amazon had sent the wrong thing!!!  He wanted a bunch of filament for his 3D printer (the other thing that showed up nearly a month late), and instead got some device for shredding chicken?  I dunno.  It was a disappointment, poor kid.  All the other presents were great, though!

So now I have-- count 'em-- FOUR TEENAGERS.  All at once!!!  What in the world were Craig and I thinking????  I don't actually have any complaints though; my kids are all pretty awesome and not terribly dramatic.  It could be way worse.

And I have to point out two random things: both Kendra and Colton are celebrating their "golden birthdays" this year-- what are the odds of that happening at the same time?  AND, unlike the last time that Colton's birthday fell on Friday the 13th, this time we didn't have a global pandemic!  So you're welcome!

Happy, happy birthday to my Colton!!!  

We're so lucky to have you as part of our family!!!