I know, I know. Valentine's Day is long gone, right?
Well, it's still February, and so I'm totally within my rights to post this. (So there.)
It seems that round these parts, people like to make their Valentines. February always seems to be too crazy of a month for me to pull that off, so I have never done it in the past. But my kids wanted to do the homemade route this year, Bria especially, and I could not disappoint. I found an awesome idea online that was totally cute, involved scrapbook paper, the computer, conversation hearts, plastic and my sewing machine. Already you know that this was way too much for me to attempt in my stressed-out state. But, as usual, I suffered from delusions of creative grandeur and was absolutely sure I could pull off making 62 of those suckers with grace and speed.
Ha!
After the first one, I knew I would have a long 30 hours of crafting ahead of me if I chose to continue. So, naturally, I didn't choose to continue.
I posted about it on Facebook instead.
And my friend Kirsti came to the rescue by posting this link.
And I said, "I can totally do that!" And this time I knew it was true, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die.
The next day I took about a half an hour to do a quick photoshoot. I figured these were photos that would be destroyed fairly quickly so I wasn't going to fuss about photographic perfection.
But, it still wasn't exactly easy.
First, I had to coax Sophia out of her favorite pink blankie.
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I'm ready for spring now.
I am quite impressed that it's taken until the end of February for the winter blahs to set in. It seems I usually have them by mid-January. But I haven't been in hibernation yet this year, until maybe today. (By the way, Chloe made it through the dentist, but it took all she had and she needed to come home and sleep instead of try to go to school like she was hoping. She did have to go to a faculty meeting with Joel while I taught my lessons, but I was able to postpone my preschool volunteer hours to tomorrow and the branch canceled Visiting Teaching Conference tonight. Too many sick kids, not enough people coming. And, if you only have 9 or so sisters coming in the first place, and only 4 or 5 drop out, it's not worth having. So my schedule is much lighter than I thought earlier. Thank goodness.)
Wow, that was quite the parenthetical digression.
Anyway, I think my lack of the doldrums (until now) may have something to do with having two major concert preparations back-to-back. Messiah in December and this last one. Kept my mind off all the cold and the snow and the lack of daylight.
But I'm ready for spring now.
Unfortunately, spring isn't coming anytime soon. When I drove past the baseball fields today and saw that the chain link fences were only a foot high, I realized that I have a good while left to enjoy the snow. Or suffer through the snow. Or endure the snow. But I might as well try to enjoy it.
I tell you though, I'd enjoy it all much more if it were only 70 degrees out at the same time!
That was a nice fairy tale, wasn't it?
...in the form of MORE PICTURES! And a concert review! Aren't you so excited? Someone else sent these new pictures to us, so I'm posting them here for your viewing pleasure. Or not. I guess I am just feeling a little bit self-conscious about posting so much of this, that's all. It feels way too narcissistic for my comfort.
But I'm over it now. It is my blog, after all, and this is what I have lived and breathed the last several weeks.
So, first the review. This was done by a self-proclaimed "opera rookie" and is in the University's newspaper/news website. Here is a link if you are so inclined to read it. It is a somewhat humorous review, not dry and boring at all, although not very well edited. (Oh, and it's the second article down. Can't figure out how to link just the one article, sorry.)
Now for the pictures.
This is from the Verdi...the Ave Maria part at the end.
When I was in college, my voice teacher once yelled at me for not having very good rhythm. He told me that I would one day be on stage and that the conductor would inevitably be frustrated with me because of my lack of rhythmic ability.
It was one of those moments that has been seared into my brain. I remember exactly which song we were working on, exactly what the rhythmic problem was (partly because it is still written into my book and partly because I was a little traumatized during that lesson), and exactly what I thought about everything that was said.
And here's exactly what I thought:
After record low snowfall in January (we have *only* received 140 inches this winter so far), we have finally gotten a couple storms the last few days. I suppose the DC area stole all of our snow last week, and I never thought I'd welcome a big storm in February, but here I am, all open-armed and welcoming.
There is a two-hour delayed start for school today, and we had to walk to the bus stop to find out about it. I honestly didn't think that the weather was bad enough to merit closing school, so I didn't even check my email before we left. At least the kid across the street didn't know, either.
The girls (minus Sophia, who is sick) are now outside in the front yard, happily playing in the very large snow drifts the wind left us last night. Why let bundling up for the bus stop go to waste?
I'm procrastinating going upstairs and having my daily meeting with Jillian. She is kicking my trash. But I will get into that dress. Yes. I will.
Otherwise, I'm off to teach lessons this morning, and practice this afternoon with the first orchestra rehearsal tonight. Tomorrow is another crazy day full of lessons, dentist appointments, girl scouts, orchestra, practice, and a flight bringing my mother to me. And then we'll hit the ground running.
Have a great week!
I'll see you on the flip side!
Because it's all too much for me right now.
I've been having a really, really hard time striking balance in my life this last month. I have definitely been trying to run faster than I am able, and I am feeling it. My house is messier than it's been in a long time, because cleaning hasn't been too high on the priority list. My Google reader is now bursting at the seams with 1,000+ unread blogs, which I'm pretty sure I'll never get to (sorry everyone). I have been teaching my vocal lessons with so little preparation it's almost scandalous. I feel guilty about doing anything with friends, my calling is suffering, and I even told Joel we couldn't go out on a Valentine's Day date because it was just too stressful for me this weekend.
Okay, so perhaps I'm being a teensy bit overdramatic here. I do clean my house (just not very well), and I usually read at least a couple blogs every day, but I haven't been commenting much. Even if I don't sit down and actually write out lesson plans, I do think about my students a great deal and how to help them best. I have turned down only a few friend outings, I only have one Young Woman, she'll forgive me, and well...Valentine's Day can be just as easily celebrated at home as it can in some restaurant somewhere, right? Besides, I made my kids' valentines this year, and they rocked, so that's got to count for something.
But I'm still a stress case, and only two things are on my main priority list right now.
I am really good at getting caught up in life and forgetting about what's most important. Sometimes I have the attitude that my children, my scriptures, my prayers, my husband will always be there....I need to worry about all of these other things first.
So many things to worry about.
How to pay the bills.
My weight.
Getting the house clean.
Making valentines for the girls' V-day exchange at school.
My volunteer hours for the preschool carnival.
Memorizing my arias for the concert in 2 weeks.
Singing an A#.
Preparing voice lessons.
Why I haven't received the book I'm supposed to review yet.
Decorating the house.
Getting all the laundry and dishes done.
Finding time to exercise.
Blogging.
And much, much more.
Of course, my children and husband and church duties are on that list, too. It just seems that all too often they are pushed down to the very end, when they should always be right at the very top.
My mom recently pointed me to a blog of a family her friend knows. Their youngest son had an accident and is now in Primary Children's Hospital fighting for his life. I've been reading it and I feel like my eyes have been opened and I am trying to shift my priorities back to the way they should be.
This post especially had me realizing just how important it is. Sure, the things on my list are "important," but they aren't as important as my babies.
Anyway, those are my thoughts for the day. I am off to cuddle with Sophia for a while before I face all of my other worries.
One of the hotels downtown has "Welcome to Winterland!" written on their marquee. Truer words were never written--if you live here, you just have to learn to love winter, or you're not going to be a happy camper.
And if you want to embrace the winter, there is no shortage of ways to do it. We have downhill skiing and cross-country skiing, we have ice hockey and ice skating, we have snowmobiling and sledding, we have snowshoeing, we have broomball (another post for another day), we have snowman building kits.
And we have Winter Carnival.
I admit, I haven't quite understood all of the hype behind Carnival in the weeks and days leading up to it, but I get it now. Carnival is basically a snow sculpture contest. There is a theme, and several different categories. One of the categories is the all-night contest, where groups make a sculpture from start to finish in one night (that took place last night, not far from my house, and the music was loud). The other categories allow the sculptures to be worked on for several weeks before Carnival, so they are more elaborate. They are then judged, and I honestly have no idea what the winners get besides the glory of winning, but I'm sure they get something cool.
Anyway, today I took the girls to campus to look at all the sculptures. We didn't get to see all of them, especially not some of the more elaborate ones (we have seen a lot of the fraternity houses' entries from the car), but the ones we saw up close and personal were pretty darn amazing.
I definitely get the hype behind Winter Carnival now.
And, I also took lots of pictures. And I do mean lots of pictures. Sorry. I'm just making up for the extreme lack of pictures on my blog lately.
This year's theme was Games.
Some people took that to mean board games.
We had Candyland.
Santa brought Bria a big giant white board for Christmas this year. He also threw in a few markers, an eraser and some cleaning spray.
She is in love with it.
And so am I, frankly.
I think all mothers wish to have some sort of magical window into their children's brains--to have access to their thoughts and feelings and to really understand better where they are coming from. This white board that hasn't even been put on the wall yet (it's really big), and is just leaning against the wall near her bed has proven to be just that sort of magical tool. It has let me into the inner workings of Bria's mind and heart and helped me to understand her better, and to know what is important to her at age 9.
Every morning when I go into their room to do a basic tidy-up, I look forward to seeing what is written on that board. Sometimes it's a to-do list of homework, or books she'd like to read, or what she needs to get ready for the swimming party she was invited to. Other times she'll have written a little love note to Chloe or Sophia. Some days it's a few pictures, and other days it's been erased and left blank.
Today's white board message was a cute little picture of five girls, with their names labeled beneath them: Bria, Ann, Erica, Sarah, Miriam. These are her friends. From this picture I learned that they call themselves "The Beautiful Girls" which I love. Around the pictures she had written things like, "Look at all the beautiful eyes!" and "Aren't we beautiful? Yes!" and "We are ESPECIALLY beautiful girls." and "We're BFFs!"
Bria has not always been so lucky as to have great friends like the ones she has found here. She was bullied in Kindergarten and her only friend was the boy we carpooled with to school, which didn't win her many points with the other girls. She started first grade the day after we'd moved to Cedar City, and she had a really hard time finding any friends at first. And then the friends she did find were somewhat questionable in character (I have lots of interesting stories that should not ever come home with your first, second or third grade child). Once, one of her so-called friends pulled down her pants, underwear and all, on the playground. She never had an easy time of it, and it was so hard for me to watch, because I knew that being accepted by friends--good friends--is something that is important to every child, and especially important to Bria.
In third grade, a new girl named Olivia moved into our ward and was also in Bria's class. She was overweight and nobody was very nice to or accepting of her. Except Bria. I remember watching her ride her scooter to school one morning (school was about a block and a half from our house) and I saw her stop to talk to Olivia, who was walking alone. Pretty soon, they were taking turns on Bria's scooter, and even though I was a little worried they'd be late to class, I was very happy to see Bria being so kind to this girl. They became very good friends, and even when our ward split and they didn't end up in the same one, they remained pretty close. This was the first good friend Bria has ever had, and she was not excited about moving all the way to Michigan when she had just barely found her.
I have never prayed so hard for my child to find a good friend as I did upon our move here. When I met Ann's mother on the first day of school and discovered that she had three daughters the same ages as mine, and that Bria and Ann were in the same class, I knew without a doubt that this was the answer to my prayer.
And so it has been. Bria has never been happier or more confident in herself.
I haven't been able to stop thinking of that message on her white board today. To me, it just further confirms that we are supposed to be here. This is a place where my child(ren) can flourish, and where I have proof that they will.
Remind me to call Santa and thank him.
We have just finished eating a hearty beef stew for dinner. The girls clear the table while Joel retreats into the bedroom with his computer to study scores.
It's too chilly to read in the living room, so I join him on the bed with my book.
Soon, Sophia has cuddled up next to me with her own book, and I open the flaps with her while we practice counting and naming colors.
Then, Bria and Chloe come, too. They each have a stack of magazines: The Friend. Bria finds a comfortable spot on the king-sized bed and begins to devour them. Chloe manages to squeeze in between Joel and me, and begins to search for the hidden CTR rings, letting out a joyful little yelp each time she discovers one.
Slowly, I begin to forget about the undone dishes in the kitchen, the unfolded laundry sitting next to the bed and the mess of art supplies in the living room. The stresses of life melt away as I giggle with Sophia, who is trying to count the apples: "One, two, firteen, sisteen, five!" she says. I turn to help Chloe sound out a big word, and Bria has now taken to finding the CTR rings. She is looking right at one, but cannot see it until I point it out to her.
Haydn is playing softly from Joel's computer, and we all laugh together.
