Studio Recital

I have a thankful heart; today was a special, wonderful day!  My students all had a chance to perform in our studio recital, and they all did wonderfully!  As I've said several times today, I never thought I would be teaching kids and loving it so much, but I do!  I love every one of them, and am so incredibly proud of how well they performed and how the whole event went.

In the past, I have only had a few students, and my friend Lisa was kind enough to let them share the stage and perform on her studio recital.  Right now I have 10 of my own students, so we decided to have separate recitals on the same day and share the space and setup duties.  It worked out very well.


My parents were able to come for the weekend, and besides being able to see their granddaughters' first piano performances, they were a huge help.  My dad brought his nice camera and took several wonderful photos that I'm so grateful to have!


Mom made sure all the food for the reception was arranged and ready for serving, while I ran around nervously making sure the musical and organizational details were taken care of as it was time for the recital to start...


Koty and Addie came early to rehearse their duet and make sure we had a good microphone/sound system setup for them.  Using the area mic worked really well and gave them a little bit of room to move and freedom.

I was a bit nervous about everything running smoothly, but really enjoyed the performances and the way the whole event came together.

Since I always loved hearing my teachers perform, I thought I would be an example to my students and show them that I was practicing something for the recital too.  I sang and played The Lord Is My Shepherd, which is a lovely setting of the 23rd Psalm by Jewish composer, Abraham Kaplan.  I was a bit flustered from the flurry of activity in getting the recital rolling, and though I went first to take the pressure of performing first off my students, it was hard to get calm and perform as well as I wanted.  

Sylvia went first after me, and played Bells of Great Britain.
She really enjoys playing, and does such a good job.  

Later in the program, we played a duet called Time to Celebrate, which was great fun.  I love making music with my girl!

Addie played Pumpkin Boogie for her piano solo.  She performed so well; I could tell she was really concentrating on performing her best.  Her tempo was controlled, dynamics and articulations accurate, and it was clean and polished.  She did great!

Eliza was so sweet, as always.  She played a medley of Oom-Pa-pa and When the Saints Go Marching In that we put together.  She had even transposed the second one into the Key of G and memorized it that way so she wouldn't have to change keys.
And, we had such fun playing with tempo changes in our duet of Do-Re-Mi!  She is always well prepared and works hard to play flawlessly.

Annah and I played My Pony together.  We had decided to play it 3 times through, in different ways, to make it more interesting.  The first time she played it alone.  The second time I joined her and we played it softly until adding a crescendo into the last phrase.  The third time through, we played forte until we put in a diminuendo to the end.  We were entertained, even if no one else got it. ;)  

Kasey has only had 5 lessons with me!  We had worked on two songs, and each had a preference between the two.  She was so sweet to accept the challenge of performing the one I thought was better for her.  She sang the song Maybe, from Annie, and did a very sweet performance.  I look forward to lots more lessons and performances with her!

Little Gabi is my youngest student.  She has only taken lessons since February, and isn't even half way through her primer book yet.  So, I was proud of her for being willing to perform already too!  She has loved the song, Bamboo Leaves in her lesson book since before we even got to it in lessons, and played very bravely today.  How adorable!

Koty sang beautifully on her solo of American Lullaby.  She is so gracious to try any of the crazy-seeming techniques I ask her to do--even with an expander and braces in her mouth.  I just appreciate her dedication to music even when it's challenging.  She loves to sing, and does it so well.  

Annah played her solo, Gold Doubloons, very well.  She is such a natural at the piano, but we have argued quite a bit these last few months over her urge to race through every song she practices!  Today, though, she was very intentional to use the slower tempo I taught her.  She played very musically, and I was really proud of her.  

Paige did well on both her solo and her duet.  Her duet song, Beach Party, was not her favorite, but she worked hard on polishing and memorizing it even so, and was so sweet to want me to play with her.  She was determined to play Rainbow Connection for her solo, and worked hard for months on it, even though it was much more difficult than the things we were working on in her regular lesson books.  I was so proud of her for setting this goal and accomplishing the reward of getting to perform the song she wanted to!

Kriegh is the boy whose brain I cannot keep up with. ;)  He processes pages of music in a glance before I even have a chance to take a breath and scan the page header to see what I am supposed to teach him!  He has been with me off and on over the years, and I am so glad he has renewed his desire to play piano. Much of the time it comes easy for him, but he is committed to practicing and conquering the difficult things too.
He has been playing Malagueña for a few months now, and did a great job with it today.  
Tuesday, when he came for his lesson, he surprised me by having a second song ready for the recital!  I had given him Bourée and Musette a few weeks ago, and then he unexpectedly had to miss a couple lessons and I didn't get to hear him play it.  He plopped down at the piano on Tuesday and said he was ready to do both songs on the recital, and so he did!

Addie has literally no fear of performing.  Nerves of steel, this girl!  She just loves every chance to be on stage, and it shows.  She sang Christopher Robin Is Saying His Prayers, and despite the fact that I told her to use the handheld mic at the last minute (after preparing for weeks thinking she'd have one on a stand), she added such expression and sweetness.  Precious.

Janae is my most advanced student.  She came to me last November, having already worked through the first four levels of Faber & Faber books with her sister when she was littler.  She had a few habits to break and a few to learn, and she immediately rises to any challenge I present her.  I keep telling her I'm going to have to send her on to a better teacher soon, because she will surpass me.  But, at the same time, I want to keep her forever, because she is wonderful!
Today, she played Romance by Martha Mier (love her pieces!), and The Village Prophet by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.  She memorizes e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g she plays, and just plays beautifully.  We had worked hard on adding expression in these two pieces, and--even though she later told me her foot was shaking uncontrollably--she played them both perfectly!

Koty and Addie gave us a really fun "grand finale" to the recital with their performance of Anything You Can Do.  (I remember singing it with my friend Amy when we shared a voice teacher back in junior high!  Such a fun and silly song to sing with a friend!  Everyone enjoyed their performance!

I am SO incredibly proud of these kids!!!  And, I was so choked up, I could barely explain that I love every single one of them to bits!!!  It is such a pleasure and honor to get to share music with them, to work at trying to teach and inspire them, and to be part of their lives.
I love them, love them, love them!!!

I must say, the reception turned out to be pretty nice too!  Mom baked a Chocolate Texas Sheet Cake (without the cinnamon) and a Blonde Texas Sheet Cake with Caramel Pecan Frosting (using real buttermilk!), and made my other choices look like a really nice spread!  We had fresh pineapple, honeydew, cantaloupe, strawberries, and green grapes; various crackers and cheeses; and lime sherbet punch--minus the maraschinos.  

I love my mom.  She has such a servant's heart.  When I told her I wanted to do the baking for the reception (instead of asking my students' parents to do it), she insisted on baking sheet cakes.  This, and her willingness to set up and serve the food was such a tremendous help to me today, I can't even explain it how much I appreciate it!  She does it with much less stress and more grace than I, for sure!  She definitely has a great gift of hospitality!
And, she and Jeremy and Dad cleaned up the reception area and packed up the leftover food while I was still visiting with people who attended the recital.  They are all too good to me!

Oh, it was a wonderful day!  The students all had fun performing.  The parents and grandparents and friends were all proud and excited to see and hear their children perform.  I was affirmed in my current place in life as a music teacher, and feel so incredibly blessed to get to do what I am doing!


"Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord!" 
- Ephesians 5:19

Wish come true! (Den project)

When we moved into our house in 2001, we were so happy to have a nice, big den space to use.  While I didn't like the dark grey colors of it, the paint was new, so I wasn't in a hurry to change the color.  We especially loved that it had built-in shelves!  There was a makeshift corner desk with lots of space for me to work and store things when I started scrapbooking.

This first photo was taken in April of 2006.  As you can see, I'm not a super-organized person, but I do like to have things in their place.  I'm also not a matchy-matchy person who likes everything one trendy color either.  It was a fairly useful space for me, and I was content with that.

Four months later, in July of 2006, when Jeremy had a week of vacation at home, he decided he would replace the window in the den.  Our home is over 100 years old and all the original windows were still in it at the time.  But, this window was letting water in around it, which was destroying it.  There was even one time, when it was raining really hard, that water came out the holes of the electrical outlet right underneath it!!!  Clearly, something major needed to be done!  Well, this was the beginning of it ALL!

As Jeremy began to take the trim off the window, the wall beneath the window just crumbled away.  Okay...what to do with this?!  This turned into the decision not to replace the window, but to wall it up.  Well, we didn't want boards over the back of our house...So that led to the decision to put up vinyl siding (over the wood siding that needed painted, and would continue to every few years or so).  We knew all our windows really needed to be replaced, and that it would be better to do that before siding...

So, it all snowballed from there...

As you can see, we had no choice but to rip out the old plaster and lath board to put up new drywall...

With all the other projects, we (Okay, I don't know why I say, "we," as I really had no part in it!) Jeremy had more urgent things than finishing the den.  It kind of became the closed-off room where we kept construction supplies for a couple/few years, as he worked on it bit-by-bit when he got time.  

It was an awful mess; blown-in insulation is nasty stuff!  

This picture (below) was in April 2008.  I believe he was telling me to, "Get out!"  ;)

I think the biggest inconvenience (for me, anyway) was that all the den-type stuff had to be stored in other rooms in the house--namely the guest room and the music room for a few years.  That was annoying, but when I think about it...How fortunate are we that we even have those 3 rooms?!?!

At some point in the process, Jeremy added some more electrical outlets in the den too.  (Not all of those are operational yet, but they will be nice to have working someday.) 

There had been two windows in the den, so Jeremy replaced the other one with a new-build wood window.   He also super-insulated the walls, inside and out.  And, he put up nice, thick drywall.  Now it is the warmest room in the house! 

  In January of 2010, our friend Tom helped with the mudding and taping part of the new walls.

Then, last summer Jeremy and I primed and painted the ceiling.  (We've decided to make all our ceilings white to add more light inside the house.  When we moved in they were all the same color as the walls.  We like the brightness of the white.)  Then, when the kids and I were away for a week at my parents' house in Indiana, Jeremy primed and painted the walls.  I had chosen the light green color, Apple Tree.  I love it!  He also hung the beautiful chandelier we had bought at Lowe's.  I love it too!

So!  Another quirky thing about our old house is that there are zero closets on the main floor!  I just think that's crazy--especially since there are seven walk-in closets upstairs!!   So when we took the built-in wooden shelves out of the den (and put them in the garage), I really missed that storage space.  I dreamed of having the whole back wall of the den covered with shelves and cubbies...

We talked about it, I spent time looking online at a gazillion websites, and we even visited IKEA and discussed the kind of shelves we wanted to buy when we could save up the money.  I really didn't think I would ever actually get to have my wall of shelves and cubbies.

Enter our dear, amazing friend Shannon...

Shannon is an incredibly talented wood craftsman.  He is also very, very generous and hard-working.  Did I mention, that he is a dear, wonderful friend?  Well, he is.  (Actually his whole family is.  We love them to pieces.  I will stop there, because I could go on about their wonderfulness for years...)

Shannon learned of my dream of having a wall o' shelves and cubbies, and volunteered (Okay, he probably got roped into it!) for the job.  I described what I wanted, and he drew it up and emailed it to me.  He took measurements, and built them over Christmas break.

1/8/11 - Shannon brought the cubbies and shelves in, along with a lot of tools, in 3 huge sections.  He built the base right here in the den first, then he and Jeremy sat the pieces on top of it.  They attached them to the wall and to each other and put the top and bottom trip on that same night too.

Dawn and I and the kids played Wii and had fun chatting that evening while the guys worked.  They did stop to eat with us, but spent a few hours getting the shelves in and secured.

The next day after church we went to Lowe's and bought the primer and got started!  These babies are made of MDF, so we used oil-based primer.  Whew, that stuff is quite strong-smelling!  But, it sticks!

Jeremy and I started priming that Sunday afternoon, and he finished the priming while I was at church that night.  Then we waited for it to dry, lightly sanded everything, and wiped the dust off.

I wanted RED shelves, and chose a shade called "Grandma's Cherry Pie" in semi-gloss.  There was a LOT of surface area to paint!  The cubbies are 13" square, and there are 28 of them.  I painted 3 coats of the red paint on everything.  

1/22/11 - Then, Shannon came back (on a VERY COLD January night!) and put wood trim on the front  to cover the rough edges of the MDF and give the whole unit a seamless look.  

I am telling you, this is more beautiful than I ever imagined!!!

It was also entertaining (for me) to see the faces Jeremy made when Shannon told him to go cut certain pieces of trim.  Jeremy looked like he didn't have a clue, but Shannon was confident he could handle it.  It looks great to me, so I think, in the future, I will never believe Jeremy when he feigns ignorance about things. 

Next, I painted the wood trim with 3 coats of the red paint.  (It did take me over a week to realize that, thankfully, I didn't need to prime with the oil-based gunk, since the trim is real wood!)   

In progress...2/4/11

2/21/11 -- Looking good...

Look at all that space!!

Oh, these cubbies are great!!  

Now, I still had the 5 adjustable shelves and 2 cabinet doors for the center section that I needed to paint...  So, not wanting to get into the oil-based primer smell anytime soon, it took me a while to get up the motivation to do those.  But, I finally finished them last Monday--4/18/11!  I didn't mind all that painting one bit, because...

I really am just so excited and pleased with the new shelves and cubbies!  When I began to picture this, it sure wasn't nearly as awesome as it turned out!!  

Today, I finally put the last of the adjustable shelves in and spent some moving things around.  They look pretty full, but several of the baskets and canvas bins are partially or completely empty.  So, I still have more space I can fill.

So...what do you think?  I just couldn't be happier!

Like I said, I am not matchy-matchy...I like a lot of color!  I tried to use turquoise and bright green and brown as accents in there.  And, I'm not a neatnik...I see things even in this photo that are straightened, and I'm okay with that.  I just am super excited to have such an awesome, functional storage solution in here!  I love it, and am so grateful to have it!!!

(If you're interested in seeing a few more photos of the process, you can check out the album here.  I plan to post more photos as I get other areas of the room completed.) 

Tonight

Tonight, Caeden ate his sauteed zucchini without my even having to say one word to him about it. He then asked with manners for seconds of spaghetti and meatballs. I cheered loudly for him right there at the table, so happy!

Tonight, Sylvia changed her earrings completely by herself with no pain or tears. Then she flashed me her big, cheesy grin when I told her, "Good job!"

Tonight, Annah practiced piano and did her theory pages without being reminded because she wanted to have another lesson. I'm so glad she loves music so much; her talent is clearly evident. How awesome that I get to and she wants me to be her teacher.

Sometimes, it's about celebrating the little things.

Tonight, I choose to take note of the successes. ('Cause, Lord knows, I don't want to keep dwelling on what went wrong LAST night!)

Tonight, I looked in on them sleeping, and remembered each of them as babies. How quickly their childhoods are passing! It is bittersweet, painful joy to be a parent!

I want to get it right! I want to teach them to do right, but let them know I don't expect them to be perfect. That is a tough line to discern how and where to draw!

I want them to enjoy being children, but grow to have servants' hearts.

Sometimes, (Okay, probably most of the time.) I feel I yell too much, nag to much, say "no" too much. I try to be conscious of it and intentionally gentle. (I have learned that gentleness is not my natural tendency.  I pray for gentleness a lot.) And, I am learning that I need to celebrate the little things, like zucchini and easily changed earrings and theory pages. I'm thankful for affirmations that I do get it right sometimes. And they are going to grow up okay, as long as we all keep depending on Jesus. And I will keep praying for gentleness and celebrating the little things. 'Cause, really, they're not so little.

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Easter Morning

"Oh, glorious morning, Jesus is risen! No tomb can hold him; no stone conceal!  Glorious morning, the world has a Savior!  He is our hope, and His truth is revealed!"

We were here at home for Easter this year--no traveling.  We missed our family in Indiana, but had a great day here.  

Since the teens led worship at church, I didn't have to be there early, and we were able to take our time getting ready in the morning.  The kids finally came downstairs around 8:00 and saw the baskets.  The blue one is the candy from last night's egg hunt at church.  The pink and green were filled with new treats for them...

They were excited to dig through and see what was in them!

We hadn't even seen Tangled yet, but enjoyed watching it all together this evening.  The kids giggled the whole time...super cute movie.

Caeden put together his LEGO mini-figurine right away.  It's a hockey player.

It will probably taste gross, but I thought this marshmallow pig was too adorable!

Pumpkin seeds to plant and grow our own white pumpkins for fall!

The peanut butter girl is quite excited!

Gram made the girls' adorable dresses and jackets, and sent these outfits plus others to the kids.  About Thursday, we discovered the package containing them (which Krampa had sent last Saturday) had not arrived yet, and there was a bit of a panic and a search.  We were overjoyed when it arrived safely at our door yesterday morning!

Don't they look adorable?!  Thank you Gram & Krampa!!

A quick timer shot on the front porch with the tripod...  

Happy Easter!!!

"On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 

While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.' Then they remembered his words. 

When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles." 

- Luke 24:1-10

Easter Egg Hunt

This year, our church hosted a Saturday evening Easter event for the elementary kids.  I took the kids and stayed to help out a little at the event.  

They were all ready with their baskets this year!  Can you believe I had never bought them Easter baskets?!  We were always the ones using Wal-Mart bags at the egg hunt!  So, I picked these up on clearance after Easter last year.  It's the little things sometimes.  ;)

There were relay games at the party...

The kids either had to waddle and quack like a duck, jump like a frog, or hop like a bunny.

They also had dinner together, and then watched The Story of Jesus for Children, which is The JESUS Film adapted for children.  Many children made decisions for Jesus after watching!!  

There were door prizes, and an egg "hunt" with prizes.
Thankfully, none of our kids won the prizes this year.  It felt like we were looking suspicious after winning the past 2 years! ;)

Caeden and his buddy, Sammy, hunted for eggs together.

Sylvia was maybe a little surprised by the lack of skill needed for the "hunt."

Annah was happy with her finds.

After opening the eggs, the kids came home with almost a basketful of candy.  It was a really nice event for the kids, and a meaningful way for them to celebrate Easter with their friends.

"At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?— which means, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? When some of those standing near heard this, they said, Listen, he's calling Elijah. One man ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. Now leave him alone. Let's see if Elijah comes to take him down, he said. With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died, he said, 

Surely this man was the Son of God!"

- Mark 15:33-39